


Still Jack and Daniel Series 4 - The Rainbow Series V - Teenage Rainbow - Halloween

by Annejackdanny



Series: Still Jack and Daniel Series 4 - The Rianbow Series [5]
Category: Little Daniel - Fandom, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Halloween, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-12-24 04:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21093077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annejackdanny/pseuds/Annejackdanny
Summary: Halloween is coming... LD is invited to a party :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Little D's journey into his teenage years continue. After the unpleasent and dramatic events of the previous story, this one is more fluff and just a bit teen angst in the mix. Have a spooky Halloween everyone :)

Skate Lingua:

bail – to fall

deck – wooden part of the skateboard you stand on

double set – a double set of stairs with a middle section

drop in – act of going from a flat platform into a steep transition

flip - flip your board is to make turn on its lengthwise axis, as in a kickflip or heelflip; to flip your body is to go head over heals as in a McTwist

flip trick - a move that involves the board spinning on any or a variety of its axes

hill bomb – going down a steep hill

kick flip - rotation of the board around its lengthwise axis as a result of kicking your front foot off the heeledge of your board

trucks – wheels of the skate board

Pop Shuvits - trick in which the board is popped in the air where it rotates along its vertical axis

  


  


Teenage Rainbow -

Halloween

  


_I imagine any haunted house to have: _ _  
_ _Creaking stairways_ _  
_ _Whispering blinds_ _  
_ _Creaking doorways_ _  
_ _Blood-curdling sounds_

##  _s.zaynab kamoonpuri_

  


**I**

“What are you doing on Halloween?”

Daniel blinked slowly and turned his head. “What?”

Tara kept staring at the glass roof, one story above them. “Look, snow!”

Distracted by that new information he followed her gaze and for a moment they watched the dance of the whirling snowflakes. It was probably more of a slushy sleet though. It wasn't cold enough yet, down here, for the snow to stick around. Up in the mountains it had been snowing on and off for a while now. Even at Cheyenne Mountain Daniel and Flyboy had encountered thin layers of snow on their daily walks.

Daniel checked his watch. It would be dark in an hour or so. Almost time to go home. Ron and Grey had already left earlier. Grey had complained about a load of homework and Ron had gone home with him to help – which would most likely mount into Ron distracting him rather than being of any help.

“This place feels so much bigger and weird when the music is off,” Tara said with a frown.

The “music” blaring off Grey's portable CD Player usually was some kind of gangsta rap or electro pop and Daniel was always glad they had to keep the volume down in here so they didn't attract unwanted attention from the cops or other people.

“Because it's so quiet without it.” When the music was on, the mall appeared less deserted. Less haunted. Not that Daniel had a problem with deserted or haunted places. On the contrary, he liked it. And he definitely liked it when the music was off.

“We should do something fun here next weekend. Dress up as zombies or something, After all it's only two weeks til Halloween,” she said. “We could shoot a horror video and put it online. On YouTube.”

“Did you ever watch Dawn of the Dead?” Daniel smirked.

“Yeah. I always wanted to live in a shopping mall ever since. But in a fully stocked one,” she laughed.

“It's such a classic. Murray has the director's cut. He claims it's helpful in case of a zombie apocalypse.” Actually, Teal'c had once considered it might be helpful to barricade in a shopping mall if Apophis conquered and enslaved Earth. Especially in a shopping mall with a gun shop. And only in the odd case that they weren't at the SGC during the occasion of course.

“Murray has his priorities straight,” Tara said with a grin. She stretched and fished for her sweater on the ground. Pulling it over her head she muttered, “I hate having to go outside into the cold. It's so nice and warm in here.”

“It's nuts that they're still heating this place.” Daniel's eyes scanned the dark closed down shops. Some of them had shutters, but others had just locked their doors. It was easy to imagine someone – something – lurking between the empty shelves and counters behind the floor to ceiling window fronts. Deserted tables with neatly stacked or lined up chairs were left in former restaurants or coffee shops, barely reached by the daylight flooding in through the glass roof.

“Maintenance. Though Bob says it’s a waste of money.” Tara looked at him, eyebrows raised. “So? Halloween? What's goin'?”

He shrugged. They had wanted him to join them for the Rainbow Center Halloween party last year, but he had chickened out by telling them he'd had other plans. Big parties just weren't usually his thing. “Dunno.” He sat up and reached into the open Lay's bag Ron and Grey had brought with them. Empty. One or two of them always brought snacks or coke and water. They stored it in one of the closed shops with the broken doors downstairs. Tara and Daniel had a small stock of books here for when they didn't want to practice on their skateboards. Tara liked gay poetry books and sometimes she read poems to them.

It was a big place, but when they were all here and the gangsta rap boomed through the empty halls it felt smaller, almost cozy.

“I'm not much into Halloween. We'll hand out candy for the kids, that's it. Sometimes we carve pumpkins. Jack tries to make us watch all the Simpsons Halloween Treehouse of Horror episodes – which is the actual horror for me.”

Tara turned shocked green eyes on him. “But… what about parties? Trick or treating? All the fun stuff?”

_Trick or treating? Seriously? _“Aren't we a bit old for trick or treating?”

Tara pulled a face. “Yeah, we are now. But when you were a kid… wasn't that the highlight of all highlights for you?”

“Um, no?”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Ah, no. No, I'm not.”

“Didn't you go trick or treating? Didn't you get to dress up as your favorite superhero or whatever and go out to get tons of candy?” Her face lit up, probably at some very happy memories and he had to smile because he could picture her wearing a witch costume, pretending she was flying on her broom.

“What was your favorite costume?” he asked.

“Luna Lovegood. She's so wonderfully loony, yet gentle and brave. And she has awesome hair.”

Daniel grinned. He'd been spot on about the witch costume even though he would have tagged Tara more for going as Hermione.

“My mom gave me a Ravenclaw scarf and I got to carve my own wand. I even had a wig, but it didn't come close to Luna's real hair. It looked more like Hannah Montana.” She sighed. “I tried to talk Ron into dressing up as...”

“Ron Weasley?” Daniel chuckled.

“No, Harry. But he wanted to be some popstar dude instead. Oh, and one year I was Indy, but they wouldn't allow me to have a bull whip. Mom thought it was too violent.” She balled up the Lay's bag and stuffed it into the pocked of her fluffy mauve winter jacket.

One of the rules they had to follow in order to hang out here was to always take home their trash.

When the security guy, who was also the janitor of this place, had caught Tara, Ron and Grey skating here he'd been mad and threatened to call their parents or the police. Somehow they had talked the guy into letting them off the hook with a warning. It had turned out that Bob, as he had introduced himself, used to skate as a teen and he remembered how there hadn't been any cool places to practice where no one chased kids away or threatened to call the cops on them.

All that had happened before Daniel had come to Spring Mall for the first time and he had only met Bob a couple of times himself. He left them alone and turned a blind eye, which suited them all.

Of all of them Daniel probably was the only one fully aware of what a huge risk Bob was taking upon himself by letting them 'play' in here. If the owner ever found out or if one of them ever got seriously hurt in here for some reason, Bob would probably get sued by their parents and the owners of Spring Mall. He tried not to dwell on that. Tara, Ron and Grey had come here to skate for almost a year before they had invited him to join them. And they would continue to do so whether he told them about legal issues or not. Plus, Bob was an adult and very much aware of the risk he was taking.

Daniel tried to zone all this out and most of the time that worked pretty good.

“Lights should go on soon,” he said and as if on cue several of the neon lights along the walls sprang to life with a low clacking sound. They flickered for a moment and then some of them died again. The lights that still worked illuminated parts of the hallway in ghostly white. Other parts of the long walkways were kept shrouded in shadows.

Around the corner, by the dead escalators a Starbucks sign was trying its best to keep going, but the inner and outer ring on the logo, usually emitting a low green glow, only blinked tiredly on and off. Sometimes the white letters glowed for a while, then flunked out again. The coffee shop lay silent and dark. No one had bothered to take down the coffee making appliances and Daniel had often wondered if they still worked.

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the wind howling around the corners of the building. “This place is perfect for Halloween,” Tara said with a snort.

She was right.

Every time Daniel entered Spring Mall it felt as if he had stepped through the gate into some weird post apocalyptic world with empty ruins and dead civilizations. In the summer it had been magical in an exciting nice kind of way with bright sunlight flooding the hallways and the high plants growing out of proportion in their huge pots. A couple of those plants had started to conquer the walls and had begun a slow journey towards the roof. Everything was a bit eerie and there had been something cool about particles of dust gleaming and sparkling in the sunlight and cobwebs wafting in light breezes coming from some smashed windows downstairs. Swallows had been nesting up in the nooks and crannies under the ceiling.

The birds had migrated south now. Only a couple of doves were left sitting on the roof racks or scuttling across the hallways looking for food. Sometimes Tara brought old bread or fed whatever snacks they had to them.

Now that days were short and the sun had lost some of its power the mall appeared gloomy and more like a setting for zombie movies. Ron loved to jump out of dark corners on his skateboard, growling and screaming, crossing his friends' path to get them to fall or at least lose their boards in order to not run the maniac over.

“What was your favorite costume?” Tara asked.

Apparently he wasn't off the hook yet. “Told you I'm not big into Halloween.” When she opened her mouth to protest he quickly elaborated. “When I was little and we lived in Egypt there was no Halloween. After my parents died I was in foster care in New York for a while and didn't have much choice on costumes. I remember wearing a Scooby-doo suit once. We always wore what was donated to the home and the big kids chose first. Halloween was never very high on my agenda.”

Daniel winced, hoping he didn't sound too pathetic. The truth was somewhere in the middle. No Halloween in Egypt and what he most remembered from Halloween in the orphanage and foster homes in New York was how the older kids had taken away the younger kids' candy. He'd been to Halloween parties in college with Sarah. At one of those parties he had passed out after some drink they had called The Grave Digger and Sarah later told him he'd puked all over her 'I dream of Jeannie' costume.

“And Jack never tried to get you into the mood? I was at your house last week, Daniel. I saw all the decorations he hauled from the basement to dust off. _He's_ certainly into it,” Tara giggled.

“Jack is like a kid in a toy store,” Daniel groaned, but had to grin, too. Then he started to get up and gather his jacket and gloves.

When SG-1 had been put together Jack had stillbeen working through Charlie's death. Teal'c had never heard about Halloween and Sam hadn't been interested either. It just wasn't something they had done.

Daniel's encounter with a certain 'don't touch that' button on a temple wall and the resulting downsizing had changed everything for all of them.

When the first Halloween of Daniel's second childhood had rolled around, Daniel had just been downsized for a couple of weeks and still lived in his base quarter while Jack had tried to wrap his head around the fact that his lover had been turned into a seven year old who had either been depressed or ready to murder someone. Halloween hadn’t been high on anyone’s agenda back then.

The year after that, when he'd been 'eight' so many things had happened and he'd mellowed down somewhat. The two halves of his mind had started working together more often as opposed to constantly fighting each other over who he was now, what he had become and how much of the 'new' him was allowed to take over from time to time.

Still, no trick or treating for him. He'd rather eat a bowl of prim'tas than dress up as Harry Potter or (as Jack had suggested once) an Egyptian mummy, and going from door to door begging for treats. But Jack had invited Teal'c over for horror movies, pizza and spooky snacks and Daniel had indulged him by helping to create a 'brain' pie and other food.

“Jack and I made finger cookies once. They were totally gross. With blood and gore and chipped dirty fingernails,” he shared some of those memories with Tara.

“Were they yummy?”

“God, yeah, we used chocolate, peanutbutter and almonds. And jam for the blood.”

“Did you ever try eyeballs?” She giggled. “We did eyeball pasta one year. With mozzarella balls and dots of pesto.”

“Sounds great. We had worm hot dogs once. We cut the sausages into long small strips, coated them with Barbecue sauce and roasted them until they looked like gross worms.”

“Ewww.” Tara stuck out her tongue. “You ever had a chicken mummy?”

“No, but I bet Jack would love that.”

“It's chicken rolled in strips of pizza crust. You can give it olive eyes.”

Daniel checked his watch again. “Speaking of food… we should go.”

“Boys! Are boys ever not hungry?” She shook her head.

Daniel shrugged. He wasn't exactly hungry, but he had been pushing his curfew far enough this week and it was his turn to cook tonight. That, and Jack had just returned from a trip to DC today where he had spent all of Friday in staff meetings over budget cuts and HWS issues followed by a dress blues party with the brass and a semi-off-the-record breakfast meeting with Colonel Davis this morning. A post DC Jack was usually a cranky Jack and Daniel opted for not getting into cranky Jack's line of fire.

They took their backpacks and left the seating area. Each level of the mall had one of those with comfortable chairs.

The ground floor seating area had been demolished. Someone had sliced the seats open and the stuffing was coming out. There were also several shattered windows down there and you could go into some of the stores, wander around the empty Barnes and Noble bookshelves or abuse the small plastic chairs and tables - of what used to be the kid's reading area - for skateboarding. Ron and Grey had carried some of that tiny furniture upstairs once and build an obstacle course to practice freestyle tricks.

Whoever had vandalized downstairs had apparently been caught or run off without coming upstairs. Up here everything had the air of neglect and deserted places, but there was no real destruction. Daniel guessed the vandalism was the reason the owner hired Bob to look after Spring Mall.

They picked up their boards from one of the empty seats, put them on the floor and Daniel couldn't help but feel that little rush of excitement, a small jolt of happiness, when he gently pushed at his board with the tip of his sneaker to set it in motion. He stepped up and gently rolled down the bright hallway, the red trucks almost soundless. He did a little swing to the right, a bit of a wavy line. Tara rolled by his side, her backpack dangling from one shoulder just like his own. They looked at each other and sped up, using one foot to push themselves and their boards forward, and the gentle flow turned into a playful race. Daniel bent slightly in his knees as he took a left turn, spread his arms to keep his balance and zipped by the Hallmark shop and the abandoned Starbucks.

He rode in a wide circle, easily dodging a toppled over recycling bin. His eyes narrowed as the double set of escalators came into view, the metal section dividing the two lanes gleaming in the hallway light, beckoning, teasing… He had seen Tara, Ron and Grey go down there several times. It didn't look that hard. He had to jump up on the middle section, calculating his speed and timing…

The trick was called a hill bomb, but they had changed it to escalator bomb.

“Daniel, I know what you’re thinking - don’t!” Tara's shout pulled him to a quick stop. He jumped off his board and let it roll out on its own. It stopped in front of the escalators.

“I wasn't...”

“You're not good enough.” After a pause she gave him a smirk. “_Yet_.”

“I wasn't gonna go down,” he muttered.

“You didn't look like you were gonna stop. And if you crash down and break any bones, the general and your uncle are going to break some of _mine_.”

Daniel kicked up his board, wedged it under one arm and headed down the dead escalator. “It's not like you're my babysitter,” he snapped. “And no one's going to break anyone's bones.”

“Well, d'oh, but your dad would tell mine and that's actually worse.” She caught up with him at the bottom and boxed his upper arm. “Hey! I'm like your older sister. Which is cool, because I'm always the 'baby' to my brother.”

Daniel swallowed down a laugh. Sometimes her protective streak was almost as annoying as Jack's – and that wasn't easy. _She doesn't know_, he reminded himself. _She just likes to do that big sister thing_. Sometimes he wished he could tell her the truth. Sometimes he wished he could tell all of them. Or at least Tara and Ron. Especially Ron, when he had one of his condescending moments. But in the end he just shrugged it off. Tara's protective streak and Ron's arrogance. Of his three friends, Grey was the only one who always treated him as an equal. But Grey treated everyone the same. Daniel had never met a kid as level headed as Grey. Maybe he had to be that way because Daniel suspected Grey had been mediator between Ron and Tara since kindergarten.

“I'm sorry,” Tara said quietly when they pushed aside the wooden bars someone had nailed over the smashed door window in one of the side entrances. Those bars, once meant to keep trespassers out, had probably come loose a long time ago. They could easily be pushed aside and back in place. “I know you want to do it real bad...” She trailed off as she moved the bars back over the hole in the door once they had both stepped outside.

“I’ve been practicing for it,” he reminded her, but the cold and the gentle snowfall quickly cooled his temper. “I think I’m quite good already.”

She pulled a face. “Uhhh, I lied. You _are_ good enough. I think you could do it.” She shook out her wild mop of brown hair – it was streaked with pink highlights today – and laughed. “The way you've been going down that car park driveway lately you're going to go down that escalator like this!” She snapped her fingers. Then she frowned. “But you can't do it unless you're absolutely sure. And you shouldn't do it without Ron or Grey being there because they're better at explaining all the things you need to think about when you do it.”

He licked his lips and pushed up his glasses with one finger. Snowflakes settled down on his head and his face, cool little kisses on his cheeks. “The car park driveway is pretty tricky. But yeah, I can do it now.” That had been quite a piece of work though.

“Yeah, but the drop in at the end is difficult. You know how even Ron struggles to keep his feet on the board when he comes down just a bit off kilter. And Ron is fab.” She buried her face in her hands. “He broke his wrist the first time he tried it.”

“Uhhh,” Daniel moaned. If he broke his wrist riding down an escalator, he needed a really good explanation for his _dad_. Breaking bones from hill bombing escalators in closed-down malls wouldn't go over well. “What did he tell his parents?”

“Only that he fell. No specifics. Good for him that he could still walk so we didn't have to call an ambulance in here. We just got him home and his mom took it from there.”

“Good. I need to remember that. Not breaking legs or ankles. Wrists and arms only.”

Tara laughed, flipping him the bird.

Once they put the boards on the bicycle racks Daniel pulled his gloves from his jacket pockets and looked over at the dark mall. It was set back from the road a little, a two story klutz shaped like a triangle. Lots of concrete in what used to be a sunny yellow, but had turned into an ugly dirty color over the years, with a glass roof. Several dented shopping carts were scattered here and there on the large parking lot which was littered by old bottles and other trash which was constantly blown apart and then gathered together again into heaps by the gusts of late October winds. From time to time a city clean up team stopped by to pick up the trash and empty the cans. No one removed the shopping carts though.

The Spring Mall. Once upon a time it had been a place of the hustle and bustle of people going shopping and running errands.

Daniel used to go shopping here when he'd still been big. Actually, the building where he had lived then was just around the corner from Spring Mall. He remembered sitting up there in that Starbucks with a book or going through notes on his laptop. He remembered him and Jack having coffee there. And cake. Those memories were dusty and old just like Spring Mall itself. Cobwebs from the past.

Spring Mall had closed its doors just like that part of his life had shut down. Only he'd gotten lucky and his life had sent him down new roads and new beginnings while Spring Mall stood there quiet and dark, waiting for whatever was going to happen to it. Daniel felt kind of sad about that.

“Spring Mall would make for a cool Halloween party,” Tara said suddenly. “We could invite other kids from the center.”

“Ye-ah, but if we invite kids from the Center to come to our party this wouldn't be our place anymore. Other kids will start to hang out here. And I like this being 'our' place,” Daniel cautioned. “Besides, you know what Bob said. No new kids,” he added quickly. As much as he liked being at the Rainbow Center for LGBT kids, he wasn't keen on having a party with hoards of them. “And there's going to be a Rainbow Center Party that all of them can go to.”

She raised her hands in defeat. “Okay, okay. No other kids. But we could come here, just the four of us. Decorate, bring snacks and listen to music. And skate. Our parents will think we're at the Rainbow Center, partying with the kiddies.”

“You know I can't do that. But you guys go ahead and have fun. I told you I'm not big into Halloween anyway.”

She grimaced. “Yeah, I know. But it’s such a shame. It’d be so much fun.”

“Sorry.” Once the dust had settled after that huge fight two months ago Jack and BD had been amazingly chilled about the fact that he didn’t tell them where exactly he was spending some of his skating time. Daniel wasn’t going to risk that by lying or holding something back again. And if he told them he was going to a Halloween party at their ‘secret’ place Jack would probably start nagging again or setting a ridiculous curfew or not allowing him to go at all because it might not be ‘safe’ spending part of the night there.

Unless…

“We could spend the day here though, have some candy, rattle with chains or whatever,” he suggested with a shrug. “And then you can go to the center party at night.”

“It won't be the same. Halloween at Spring Mall… imagine that! At night! It'll be super scary.”

“Well, maybe...”

“And besides, the center party was fun last year, but it was totally crowded and most of the games were boring.” She pulled a strip of gum from her jacket pocket, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “Getting too old for those kiddie parties, I guess.”

Daniel didn't know what to say to that so he just shrugged.

Tara gave him a very sweet girly pout. “I want you to be with us on Halloween!” Then she brightened up. “So, we meet at your tree house. I love your tree house! We can bring snacks and play cool Halloween games!” She perked up at the idea immediately. “I'll text the others, we'll make a list of who brings what!” She jumped on her bike, gave him a little wave and took off.

“Wait… what? We… oh, I don't know…” But he was talking to the empty street.

Daniel used his glove to brush the melting snowflakes off his saddle and went down the street into the opposite direction than Tara. The wheels lurched and slipped on the wet leaves on the ground and he had to focus on not falling off his bike until he regained control again. Sometimes he missed the Schwinn he'd gotten when he had turned nine. It had been a kiddie bike, but its wheels had been sturdy and secure in almost every weather. Last year he had decided he was too old for a kid's bike and had given the Schwinn away and got this MTX Blue Black, which had sturdy wheels, too, but still wasn't as reliable as the Schwinn.

Or maybe he was just nostalgic. The Schwinn had been his first bike – it had symbolized his first step into more independence of this second childhood thing.

He had always wanted a Schwinn when he'd been a kid. Back then. In the seventies. There had been many things he had wanted or dreamed off and then locked away in the 'not gonna happen' drawer. This time around he had recovered several of those those 'not gonna happen' things from back then and made them reality.

Doctor Swenson, his first therapist, had encouraged him to write a To Do list for all those things he missed out on in his first childhood and at some point he had started to work on that.

Halloween parties hadn't exactly been on his To Do list and he wasn't sure if he actually wanted to host a party for his friends.

His 'new friends'. In his mind they were still his 'new friends' or his 'other friends'. Because SG-1 had always been his only circle of friends. Friends and family at the same time.

Tara, Grey and Ron were different kind of friends.

Even after spending time with those kids for a year now he wasn't always sure how he really felt about having friends 'his own age'. His physical age as he liked to call it. But of course he knew it wasn't just his physical age.

Being thirteen was a weird mix of physical appearance and his mind still struggling with age versus curiosity, experience versus the thrill of trying new things. Things he had no experience in because he had never tried them before. Rational thought process versus what his heart wanted, what his hormones wanted to talk him into.

Like taking that ride down the escalator. Or, on occasions, the urge to wrestle Ron to the ground and punch that sardonic grin off his face. Or alternatively suck his tonsils out. Oh yeah, hormones riding high here. Not always, but on and off. Last year he'd had a reluctant crush on Tara, but now he had swung the other way. He was getting used to having these over reactions, he could totally put them down to being a teenager.

Not that there would ever be anything between him and Ron. Daniel wasn't looking for teenage romance and Ron had his eyes on Grey and Grey was in denial – he was dating a boy from the center. But Daniel was sure that was just smokescreen. He had been there, done that… long before Ron and Grey had been old enough to spell 'gay'.

All the teenage drama around him was exhausting at times. Sometimes he took a step back and retreated to the sanctuary of his books and his laptop or spending more time with Jack and BD, Sam and Teal'c again for a while.

But he always returned to 'play' with his new friends because he loved to skate and he had found out that this other life, outside the SGC and the comfort zone of his family, was exciting. Despite all the secrets he had to keep from his new friends and the weird moments of feeling the weight of his life experience, he had discovered that being with Tara, Ron and Grey gave him an opportunity to explore being a teen and to leave his 'adult' persona in the closet. That didn't always work, but he was getting better at it.

  



	2. Chapter 2

  


_A family will bring laughter and joy,_ _ **  
** _ _Sometimes they just simply annoy._ _ **  
** _ _But that's ok, since they care,_ _ **  
** _ _Many things with you, they'll share._

**AnitaPoems**

**II**

When he entered the house, the dog almost ran him down in the hallway and Daniel went down to hug Flyboy who was all over him, muzzle and paws. “Hey, hey, hey, I'm home, it's okay, calm down,” he laughed and pushed at the black head, trying to avoid the tongue trying to slobber all over his face. “Lucy, I'm home!” he hollered in the general direction of the living room.

“Daniel! Get in here!” Jack hollered right back.

Daniel sat back on his heels and rolled his eyes. “What now?” he muttered. He wasn't late today and he hadn't forgotten to do his chores this morning. So, what?

Frowning Daniel pushed himself off the floor and jogged down the two steps into the living room where he was met by Jack and BD sitting at the coffee table, focused like hawks on the chess board between them.

“YES!” Without taking his eyes off the board, Jack waved at Daniel to come closer. “C'mon, I need your help.”

“No, you don't. That's cheating,” BD growled from across the chess board.

“Hey, your brain against mine is cheating, period.” Jack pointed at the board and waggled his eyebrows at Daniel. “Help your old man out here?”

LD quickly scanned the chess board. “Move your bishop to g5.”

Jack pursed his lips. “That's… ambitious.”

“Yeah, don't do that,” BD agreed readily, giving Daniel the evil eye.

Daniel smirked and decided it was time to start dinner. “Have fu-un,” he sing-songed and retreated into the kitchen. On his way out he heard Jack say, “I love ambitious!”

Phew. No trouble ahead. The evening was starting out well enough.

Daniel fed the dog and then lost himself in the mindless but enjoyable task of cooking. As he chopped onions, zucchini, carrots and crushed the garlic he thought about the Halloween party. They were too old for cute costumes and too young to hang around like Daniel was used to from SG-1 team nights.

So, food and drinks was certainly part of it, but leaving it at that wouldn't be entertaining enough. Tara had said 'cool games' opposed to the 'boring games' the center had hosted last year. Was truth or dare a cool game? They needed music. Preferably no gangsta rap. Decorations? Yes, definitely.

When the sauce was simmering and the pasta water started boiling, BD sauntered in and inspected the bottle of wine Daniel had put out on the counter to breathe.

“How'd it go?” Daniel asked with a knowing little smile.

BD put the bottle down and started setting the table. “I don't think we'll finish this tonight. He’s tired. But he's in the lead for now.”

“Of course he is. Say _thank you, Daniel_,” Daniel grinned.

“Thank you? You ruined my totally perfect strategy by giving him that move,” BD grumbled.

“Yes, but now he's in a great mood and the post DC blues has gone out the window.”

BD snorted. “He's going to rub it in all evening.”

“Who's going to rub whom?” Jack carried wine glasses in from the dining room and sniffed approvingly. “Something smells good.”

“BD said you're going to be smug about your move all night.” Daniel put the pasta into the boiling water and added herbs, salt and pepper to the sauce.

“The move that wasn't actually _your_ move,” BD threw in.

“I was getting there. I just needed a little push into the right direction,” Jack insisted. He grabbed a spoon and headed over to the stove.

“Jack!” Daniel stepped between him and the sauce. “It'll be done in a couple of minutes!”

“Someone has to make sure it has enough salt.”

“It has enough salt.”

“Says who?” Jack poked Daniel's chest with the spoon. “Step aside.”

“No! You'll keep eating out of the pan and by the time the pasta is done the sauce will be gone,” Daniel laughed and pushed the poking spoon away. “Ja-ack!”

It was then that the pasta almost boiled over. Daniel jumped to grab the pot holders and jerk the lid off. It fell on the counter with a loud bang, but the water calmed down as soon as he turned the heat down and stirred.

“You better keep an eye on that pot,” Jack smirked as he quickly stepped up to the pan and dipped his spoon in.

“You know when I do this, you always tell me I'll burn my mouth,” Daniel muttered.

“Because you're never careful...” Jack blew over his spoon, licked his lips and took a careful sip. “Needs more salt.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“Does.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, but couldn't stop himself. “Doe-s no-ot.”

Sometimes he suspected that Jack would actually fit in with his 'new friends' more easily than Daniel himself.

“When the two of you are done acting like squabbling siblings, maybe we could pretend to be civilized people and have dinner?” BD got the wine and poured one for himself and one for Jack. “Want a spritzer?” He offered the wine bottle to Daniel. “It's a pretty semi balanced, not too dry.”

“Sure.” He hadn't developed the same love for wine he used to have when he'd been big yet and they wouldn't let him have a whole glass anyway, but sometimes he liked just a bit of it in his San Pellegrino.

A couple of minutes later Jack carried the sauce over and Daniel went to get the finished pasta and then they all just dug in and enjoyed their dinner for a while.

“So, how was DC?” Daniel asked finally. And while he hoped that wouldn't bring back the DC blues, he liked to be kept in the loop.

“Boring. Annoying. Annoying. Boring. And there was something odd about the drinks I had with Davis last night.” Jack grimaced.

“If by ‘odd’ you mean you had too much of them, you’re probably right,” BD deadpanned. “You look a bit hungover.”

“I feel a bit hungover,” Jack grumbled. “And I had these really weird dreams.” He picked up his wine glass, stared at it and put it down. “And this morning it felt like I didn’t get any sleep at all.”

“Whiskey,” BD guessed.

“Scotch.” Jack suppressed a yawn.

“Was there any mentioning of finally getting green light on that ancient city? The whole archeology department is anxious to go and the IOA has been stalling the issue since August,” BD asked.

“Not yet. Apparently it takes time.” Jack rolled his eyes and then shrugged. “On the upside Davis backed me up on trying to avoid more budget cuts for equipment. So the archeological department won't run out of money for new equipment anytime soon.”

“Oh, cool, does that mean we can order those new microscopes we need?”

“Sure. I'll wave it through. But we have to talk about quantities,” Jack said. “This is the best pasta sauce ever, Daniel, where'd you get the recipe?”

“Tara gave it to me. It's her mom's special sauce. Secret ingredients.”

“Give that woman a medal.”

“We need four large microscopes and six handheld bone microscopes,” BD said, then turned to Daniel. “Like what? Wine… ? Herbs? Do tell?”

“If I tell you it won't be a secret anymore,” Daniel teased.

“Four? And six? You have any idea what these things cost?” Jack groused.

“Yep,” BD said, “we looked them up.”

“How about three and three?” Daniel suggested.

“How about one and one?” Jack said. “Not everyone needs to work with them all the time or at the same time, right? You can share, draw straws, roll a dice?”

“Two.” BD said, holding Jack's glare. “Two new microscopes, one for each of the big labs. The large ones with the new zoom technology. And four new handheld bone microscopes. The bone microscopes could be set up in the field if necessary and the new ones are much better to handle than the ones we are using now. Ideal would be one for each team with an archeologist, but four will do...”

“For now,” Daniel threw in for good measure.

“For now,” BD agreed.

“Fine, I'll look into it,” Jack muttered.

“Oh, you don't have to look into it. Daniel and I did all the looking into it. You just have to sign,” BD said with a wide smile and was met by a deadly stare from across the table.

“At least we're making things easy for you,” Daniel said, giving Jack an all-innocent look. “We're just being helpful.”

“Ye-ah, I feel the love. As long as I sign the right papers,” Jack snorted.

“And do the dishes,” BD added smoothly. “It's your turn.”

Jack glanced over his shoulder at the pots and pans on the counter and apparently decided to change the subject. “So… Little D – what were you up to today?”

Daniel looked at his plate, focusing on wrapping spaghetti around his fork. “Skating with Tara and the guys,” he said vaguely.

“At the center?” It was such a harmless simple question, no big deal, but Daniel was almost sure Jack did it on purpose because somehow he seemed to _sense_ when Daniel hadn't been at the Rainbow Center.

Daniel had promised his friends… no, he had sworn to them, that he wouldn't give away their special place because none of their parents would approve of it as a 'safe place to play'. Part of him felt honored that they had invited him there, that, even though to them he was still a 'kid', they had trusted him to hang out there with them. And he felt bound to that promise. He had explained all that to Jack and BD. And to Doctor Murphy. The Doc and BD hadn't been that much of a problem, but Jack had done a lot of barking and going all paternal on him… until, somehow at some point he had 'heard' him and let it go.

But on a subconscious level Daniel still felt uncomfortable whenever they talked about his skating location outside the center. Probably because he knew it wasn’t easy for Jack not to know where Daniel was spending some of his time.

“Uh, no. In town.” Daniel quickly shoved the fork into his mouth before the pasta could slide off again.

“Had fun?”

This he could answer easily. “Yeah. There's a new YouTube channel with skating tutorials and we watched it today and tried to copy their moves. Some of these guys are so good, you watch them and it all looks so easy! I wish I was that good!”

“If you keep it up you will be,” BD said with a smile. “You were already pretty good when we went to the skate park on your birthday. I bet you're even better now.”

“Let me know when you want to start competing. If we’re able to find a huge sport label as a sponsor you’d never have to pay for clothes ever again,” Jack teased.

Daniel grimaced. This again. “Skateboarding isn't a sport, Jack. It's a..”

“Lifestyle, yeah, I know, I know,” Jack grinned into his glass of wine.

“It's perfect because it doesn't require team practice or a coach. No one is going to single you out as the loser, you don't have to worry about no one wanting you on their team. And you don't need any kind of fixed location. You can do it anywhere, with people or alone. All you need is your board and good ground,” Daniel felt compelled to say even though they had been over this multiple of times. “And it has no rules. I like doing something without rules. The only rule you have is to take care of your board and not to be a jerk to other skaters when you're sharing the space with them.”

“And not to break your neck.”

“That's not a rule, that's self-preservation,” BD said.

“Which is not high on the agenda of either of you Daniels,” Jack pointed out.

“Only when the universe needs saving. I'm not keen on breaking my neck skateboarding,” Daniel snorted and BD chuckled.

Jack cocked his head. “So, you're always wearing your helmet now when you're skating in town?”

Oh shoot, he had forgotten to take his helmet to the mall again today. And he was pretty sure Jack had found it somewhere… Daniel tried to recall where he had last dropped it… and then decided not to risk getting caught lying.

He focused on his pasta again for a moment and then took a sip of his wine spritzer. When the silence around the table seemed to grow into something uncomfortable, he cleared his throat. “I don't need to wear a helmet all the time. I am wearing it where I have to.” Then he looked up and said, “No one wears a helmet when going off world. Well, at least most of the regular teams don't. I survived without a helmet out there, mostly. What's a little skateboarding.”

“Self-preservation, eh?” Jack shook his head and when he talked again, the teasing tone was gone. “Daniel, we've been through this...”

“Did you always wear a helmet when you were ice skating as a kid?” Daniel shot back. “And I don't mean in the rink, when you did hockey practice. I mean out there… on some Minnesota lake?”

Jack scowled. “That was...”

“_Not_ different.”

“Times were different. No one told us to wear helmets outside a rink.”

“And if they had told you, you would've complied?” Daniel asked with a knowing smile.

“Nope. But I was just a kid. I didn't know better. You, on the other hand have enough experiences with injuries… head injuries, too. You _should_ know better.”

“Like you learned anything from breaking all those bones when playing hockey or being out in the field. You went through the gate wearing a ball cap,” Daniel countered. “But don't worry. I know how to calculate my risks. And I know how to fall and roll over, thanks to you and lots of practice.” Jack had trained him in all the hand-to-hand moves in his first two years at the SGC. And field practice had honed his reflexes and skills, of course. Who would have known that Daniel's military training would come in handy for skateboarding?

“There isn't much to calculate about cracking your skull open when you go down and hit your head,” Jack said.

BD narrowed his eyes. “He has a point there, Daniel. And it's not as if you have years and years of skating practice under your belt.”

“I'm not as good as Tara, Ron and Grey… yet,” Daniel admitted with a shrug. “But they practically grew up on their boards.”

“That Ron fella is one reckless hot head,” Jack said, but Daniel thought he sounded grudgingly impressed despite his frown. “One day he might break his neck on that board of his, no matter how good he is.”

“He knows his board inside out,” Daniel explained. “Watching him skate is like watching a ballet dancer.”

“Didn't you tell us he's a total jerk… when was that… last week?” Jack's left scarred eyebrow wandered upwards.

Daniel shrugged. “He is. Sometimes. But then, so are you. And I still like you.”

Jack pointed his fork at him. “Hey, watch it! And I know I'm repeating myself here, buddy, but you're going to wear your helmet whenever you're on a skateboard or you won't be on a skateboard at all.”

The threat of having his board confiscated had hung over his head a couple of times before. Once it had actually happened for a while. Daniel took his time sulking, but if he wanted to keep his board he literally had no choice. “Yeah, okay,” he grumbled. “I'll wear the helmet if it makes you feel better.”

“_Thank you_,” Jack raised his glass at him.

Daniel decided to wear the stupid helmet for a while and then forget it again. It was uncomfortable and he always had sweaty hair after he wore it. And neither Ron nor Grey wore helmets at the mall or outside. Ron even tried to get away with not wearing his at the center and always got told off for it. Tara wore hers when she went down the escalator or practiced stair and rail jumps.

BD sipped from his wine. “Soooo, you decided you like Ron this week?”

“I do like him, period. We're friends. But, yes, he's been much less of a jerk this week.” Suddenly Daniel felt a bit cornered here. “He can be a huge pain in the mikta, but he knows how to skate. And he can be fun. Crazy fun.” He pushed his chair back and stood. It was better to leave this stage before the two of them started teasing him about man-crushes or whatever. “I'm off to walk the dog.”

  



	3. Chapter 3

  


_When I go riding on my skateboard_  
I feel the wind blow on my face  
My body glides along with freedom  
And my foot keeps up the pace 

_Skateboarding poem (unknown)_

  


**III**

Flyboy, who was always happy to go out, ran to get his leash and waited at the door as soon as Daniel put on his sneakers and jacket.

The neighborhood was dark and quiet, the pavement only illuminated by lights coming from the houses and the street lamps. He spotted some Jack-o-lanterns with glowing eyes here and there and some witches with light strings wrapped around their brooms. The snowfall had stopped and the snow hadn't stuck, but the air felt damp and chilly.

He had just walked a couple of minutes when his phone played the LotR Fellowship theme.

It was Tara.

“I screwed up, Daniel,” she whined as soon as he answered the call. “I just mentioned how we talked about Halloween at the mall and shooting a horror video. Ron and Grey are totally hyped about it now. I said we want to do a party at your tree house and they won't go for it.”

“I guess my tree house doesn't hold a candle to Halloween at a spooky mall, huh?” He tugged at the leash to keep the dog from crawling under a privet hedge.

“Ron wants to do a zombie or vampire show.” She tried to sound annoyed, but he knew she was probably excited.

“Show?”

“He has this big 'vision' – his words, not mine - about shooting a video now. He wants us to dress up as zombies or vampires and do a skate dance.”

“The stuff we were practicing for the Rainbow Center skateboard competition?”

“YES! It's two weeks til Halloween. Even if we'd do that, we have no costumes and no choreo. It's just one of his stupid ideas and now he's totally hyped about it and Grey has his back.”

“Sounds like fun,” he offered.

“Sounds like crazy.”

“No, really… why don't you go for it? I'm sure it's a lot more fun than hanging out at the tree house.” He stood at a street corner and watched Flyboy search for a good spot on an empty patch of land between two houses. It was a bit overgrown with grass and probably full of dog crap since everyone seemed to take their dogs here, so Daniel stayed on the pavement while the dog did his thing.

“I want you to come, too,” she said. “Even Ron said it'd be more fun with you.”

“Yeah? He probably said I'd make a great victim of the vampires or zombies,” Daniel guessed. But he felt a little ball of warmth settle in his belly at the thought that they wanted him to be there.

“Yeah, but you'd get lots of blood and gore painted all over you,” she said and they both laughed.

“Uh, thank you, but I'll pass.”

“I could come over and we can have our very own little Halloween party,” she suggested.

“Hey, it's no big deal. I'm not into Halloween, remember? But I want to watch that video when it's done.”

“You'll have to cut and render it. You're the only one of us with a video software on your computer,” she said, then sighed. “Are you sure you can't come? Because I feel bad.”

“Don't.”

“But I do. And now I even feel bad about telling my folks I'll be at the Rainbow party. Which is entirely your fault. Because you're acting all mature and grown up.” She said 'grown up' like it was a disgusting insect or disease.

“Hey, chill. I'm good. We're good. Spending Halloween with Jack and Daniel and Murray isn't so bad.”

“Watching all the Treehouse of Horror episodes?”

“We'll just lock Jack into a wall closet and watch something else,” he joked and it made her giggle. Flyboy returned to his side and they walked home. “Are you going to be at the center this week?”

“Sure, Wednesday after school. For the pottery class. And I'll bring my board if it's not freezing.”

“I'll see you then.”

“Daniel? Are you sure you're not mad?”

“I'm not mad.” And he wasn't. He had no problem watching TV and eating candy on Halloween. It was more in his comfort zone anyway.

_But it would have been fun to go to a party. Maybe. Possibly._

“Okay, see ya on Wednesday.”

He put his phone away and felt a pang of relief. No need to look up Halloween party games and think about costumes or whatever.

_But… _

Daniel stomped on that train of thought.

  


It rained on Wednesday so Daniel, Ron and Grey waited for Tara at the Rainbow Café instead of the skating area. The room was packed with kids and the babble of voices around them made Daniel feel as if he was in a beehive.

He stirred his hot chocolate and looked at the smiling white ghost on top of his cupcake. Even the napkin was Halloween themed with a grinning scarecrows and tin man dancing down the yellow brick road under a pumpkin moon.

“There's a new shop at Chapel Hills where you get tons of Halloween stuff. We need fake cobwebs and a fog machine!” Ron's enthusiasm over the upcoming party was like a bubbling cauldron.

“A fog machine.” Grey rolled his eyes. “You won the lottery or something?”

“A fog machine is only 35 bucks on Amazon,” Ron said.

“You could use liquid glycerin,” Grey suggested.

“Yeah, sure, where'd you get liquid glycerin?” Ron's turn to roll his eyes.

“On Amazon,” Daniel said with a shrug.

“Fog machine,” Ron insisted. “Easy and safe. And there's power at the mall.”

“35 bucks.” Grey frowned. “I don't have 35 bucks. You?”

“You got 11 bucks? And some cents? We throw together.”

“Make that 8,75. I'm in,” Daniel said. Even if he didn't go to the party he could donate a couple of dollars to the cause. After all he was the only one with a pay check. Not that the others were aware of that, but still. He liked to help them out.

“And what do you want with a fog machine when Halloween is over?” Grey asked, eyebrows raised.

“Make fog.” Ron grinned from ear to ear, showing his dimples, his brown-green eyes sparkling. “C'mon, it's cool, a fog machine.” He pushed at Daniel's arm. “Back me up here, kid?”

“It's cool,” Daniel complied, then added, “if you're into fog play.”

Grey started laughing and Ron snorted into his coke. “Fog play!”

Daniel thought that Sam probably knew how to make fog and that she would help them if she wasn't so occupied with being a mom right now. Baby Catherine was two months old and Daniel thought this was probably the first time he had ever seen Sam taking her leave without calling or dropping by at the mountain at least twice a week or sneaking into her lab to play with – to quote Jack – her doohickeys.

“We got a couple of skeletons you could use. Jack said we have to buy new decorations this year because apparently the old stuff is boring. I'm sure he won't mind you having them,” Daniel offered. “They clatter and rattle if you shake them.”

“Sounds, we need sounds,” Grey said. “Howling winds and laughter from the grave and the sound of a thousand bat wings.”

“Easily done with a laptop,” Daniel said.

“And lights. Like strobing lights. For flashing and lightning and stuff. Damn, it's gonna get expensive.” Ron scrubbed a hand over his head, messing up the raven black hair on the top of his taper fade cut. Grey wore the same hairstyle, only his hair had the color of wheat. They looked a little bit like light and darkness together.

  


“You need a good cam, too, if you want to shoot a video,” Daniel said.

“My phone cam will do.” Grey took a bite of his pumpkin cupcake.

“Not if you want to shoot in the dark, it won't. You need a cam with flash and different settings. Best would be one where you can manually adjust the light.” Daniel bit his lip, thinking for a moment, then made a decision. “I could get you a really good camera. I'd show you how to use it, too.”

“I don't know,” Grey gave him an uncomfortable look, “what if we break it? Is it yours or your dad's?”

“My uncle's.” Actually, that wasn't quite true either. It belonged to the SGC. But it would be perfect for night shoots in a deserted mall. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I might be able to get some headlamps, too. No strobing though.”

“Now we're talking, dude!” Ron leaned across the table. “But you do realize you have to come to the party then? To be our director? So if your uncle's camera breaks, it'll be on you, not on us? And, oh you'd be the perfect victim of my vampire attack.” He licked his lips and hissed. “I can smelllll your bloood.”

Daniel ignored Ron's lips and the quickening of his own pulse. He didn't draw back either. He picked up his fork and cut the ghostly cupcake in half. “You're big boys, you can handle that camera.” The cupcake was great, soft and sweet, but not too sweet.

“You want to come to that party and you know you want it, D,” Ron whispered, eyes twinkling.

“Back off, Ronald,” Daniel said calmly and took another bite of his cake.

Grey grabbed Ron by the collar of his anthracite colored shirt and pulled him back. “You need vampire fangs. And fake blood. I can probably use my sis's make up to turn into a zombie. And whiten your face.”

“Got fangs,” Ron confirmed. “And Tara said she'll take care of our make up.”

“I think we should all be vampires!” Tara tossed her backpack on the floor by Daniel's chair and placed a glass of ginger tea on the table. “Maybe we could be a vampire clan, haunting the mall at nights on a look out for humans to mooch on.”

“Yesss, but without an actual human to mooch on, we'd suck as vampires.” Ron's scowl was directed at Daniel who rolled his eyes in return. “At least if we have vampires vs zombies there could be a fight.”

“Grey could be the victim instead of a zombie,” Daniel suggested, but Grey shook his head.

“No way. I want a real costume, too, if I have to star in some weird vid.”

“Buuuut,” Tara looked her friend up and down, “you'd make a great victim. All that blood and gore would look fantastic on your alabaster skin and in your blond hair.”

“Daniel is blond, too,” Grey pointed out.

“Yeah, but dark-ish blond, not blond like you.”

“Daniel wears glasses. You ever seen a vampire with glasses?” Ron clucked his tongue and shook his head dramatically.

“He can go without glasses for a while, it's not like he's blind without them,” Tara argued.

“_Daniel _is not going to the party,” Daniel reminded everyone around the table and sighed when everyone stared back at him accusingly. He had to suppress a grin. It really felt good in an awkward way that they kept trying to convince him to come.

“If we're all playing vampires or victims of vampires, who's the director?” Grey asked.

“The victim,” Ron decided. “Because the victim won't be on screen all the time. And when the victim is on screen, one of us can hold the camera.”

“And who made you the one to decide who gets how much screen time?” Tara sniped.

“Me. Because it was my idea, Tinkerbell.” Ron leaned back in his chair and looked smug.

“It was my idea first. I mentioned it to Daniel.”

“But I have a _vision_.”

“Fine. We have to figure out a ton of other stuff first before we can start shooting.” Tara opened her pack and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “Maybe we should write down stuff. Like a list of things we need, who's going to get what, how much money we need… you know, basics?”

By the time they had to go home Tara had scribbled several lists, calculated costs, and their project had started to take shape.

  


On Friday after work Daniel was back at the center. Since he had to leave the mountain early on Fridays, his driver Josh had dropped him off at home around 14:00 and he hadn’t bothered with lunch, but hopped on his bike right away.

Ron was the only one there, telling him the other two had other things to do and so it was them on the Half Pipe and a couple of younger kids practicing on another ramp. For a while they just skated, each caught in their own moves and tricks.

Daniel reached the edge of the Half Pipe, did a flip and landed hard on the edge of the ramp. With a low wooosh of his wheelshe rode down and almost smacked into Ron who was coming towards him from the other side.

“Dude!” Ron yelled.

“Sorry!” Daniel yelled back as he reached the other edge.

“Keep your mind with it.” They raced down again, meeting in the middle once more and Ron raised his hand.

Daniel high-fived him. “Yes, master.”

Ron laughed and did a graceful fliptrick on his edge of the Half Pipe. Daniel watched him come over again. He was all long legs and arms. When Ron had returned to Daniel's side, they paused and looked over to the Funbox, which was basically just a platform with ramps on either side, one short one and one longer one. The kids over there were trying their best to balance on their boards.

“Tara said you wanna go down the escalator,” Ron said out of the blue.

“Thinking about it,” Daniel replied, flirting one shoulder.

“If we put your camera on a stand just at the right position and all of us hill bomb that escalator it'd look like we're flying. For the video.”

“I need to practice first.” Then he remembered again that he wasn't going to go to the party. “I won't be there.”

“But you want to do the escalator bomb anyway, right?”

“Well, ye-ah, but...”

“Okay.” Ron kicked up his board. “Let's go, dude.”

Daniel checked his watch. “What? Now?”

“Sure, why not. I don't have to be anywhere.” Ron's mischievous grin brought out those dimples again and Daniel couldn't help it, he had to grin back.

But he shook his head anyway. “I have to be home in an hour. And I'd rather do it by daylight. Most lamps on the ground floor are broken.”

“Are you sure you're not being a chicken?” Ron asked, flashing him another grin.

“No chicken. I'd just like to get it right and not end up at the ER.” He stood on his board again. “Self-preservation, you know?”

“Hey, Daniel...” Ron caught him by the elbow before he could go down the Half Pipe again. “You're good. You'll take that escalator. You just have to believe it.”

“Thanks,” he murmured and quickly slid away, hoping Ron wouldn't see his blush.

His face still felt hot when he reached the other side. _C'mon, calm down, he's just a kid with a skateboar d. _

“What about tomorrow?” Ron appeared at his side.

“Tomorrow is good.”

“Cool. And if you make it down in one piece, you'd better be at the party for the shooting.”

Before Daniel knew it they had shaken hands on it and high-fived each other again.

  



	4. Chapter 4

  


_The death-defying leaps of faith_ _  
_ _The frightening heights at which you face_ _  
_ _You still decide to risk your life_ _  
_ _Just because it all feels right_ _  
_ _Skateboarding by M Moore_

  


**IV**

Saturday was a beautiful fall day and Daniel marveled at the colors of the trees as he rode his bike into town, a foliage of red, golden and brown above him and more of it on the ground, lining the streets and covering the front yards.

_A good day to break ones neck_, he thought as he tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. His helmet was in his bike rack. He wouldn't 'forget' to wear it today, that was for sure.

Ron was already upstairs, doing laps around the flight of escalators. Grey was on the escalators wiping bird crap and dust off the middle section.

“Tink has babysitting duties at her cousins,” the tow-headed boy greeted Daniel on his way up. “She wants me to tell you to remember not to break any legs.”

“Gotcha.” He started by warming up, mirroring Ron's laps for a while and then he rode down the walkways and did a couple of free style tricks and used a bench as a skate rail. The sunlight fell in from above, sometimes blinding him or tricking his eyes into seeing bumps in the ground which turned out to be just dust piles. He did several kickflips and Pop Shuvits before joining the others by the escalator again.

“It's clean,” Grey called from the bottom, giving them the thumb's up.

Daniel looked down the ramp and took a deep breath. “Piece of cake, right?”

“No, not really. Always respect the escalator, dude,” Ron warned.

_Never underestimate the enemy_, Daniel heard an echo of Jack's voice from the past in his head. He recalled how they had gone through the shooting range together, how he had been both mesmerized and taken aback at the ease Jack had drawn his gun and 'killed' all those moving dummies on the training course.

“Make sure your front trucks are more loose than the back ones. It'll minimize the wobbling.” Ron picked up Daniel's board and inspected the wheels. “Should do. And keep most of your weight on the front. Bend your knees to keep the balance, but don't crouch too low, best keep your legs relaxed.”

“Okay.”

“You'll have an amazing speed when you're coming down that ramp. Use your arms to balance out the jump at the end or you'll bail.”

Grey, who was coming up the escalator, added, “And if you feel you might lose your board, let it go and try to keep your feet under you. But if you can't, curl up and roll over your shoulder.”

_'Roll over, but keep an eye on your attacker or your target, never turn your back on a gun aimed at you if you can avoid it', _Jack's voice overlapped Grey's. Daniel had to smile as he remembered that and how he had asked, “What if I can't avoid it?” “In a best case scenario your team will cover your six, in a worst case scenario… don't over think it.”

“Don't over think it,” Daniel murmured and grabbed his helmet. No one told him he was a chicken for putting it on. He fastened the strap and adjusted it.

Grey gave him the thumb's up.

Ron clapped his shoulder. “You can do it, dude. Get on that board and bomb the crap out of that escalator.”

Now was probably not a good time to remember that he used to be afraid of heights.

Daniel wiped his sweaty hands on the bottom of his jeans and stared down the long long middle section. _Now you__'ve__ totally lost it_, he thought bewilderedly._ What do you think you have to prove here?_

The answer to that one was easy – he didn't have to prove anything. Not to himself, not even to Ron and Grey. He had done things much more dangerous than a ride down and escalator with a skateboard. He had jumped off a helicopter in Russia, had walked the small ridge in Thor's Might, had climbed rocks and walked deserts. He had run for his life and been suspended in space in a glider… he had done it all.

And yet, he felt the adrenaline pump through his body.

_Don't over think it._

_Right._

He walked back a couple of feet, put his board down and stepped onto it. Getting up speed was easy, the jump on top of the escalator division was easy…

He kept his eyes straight forward into the dim abyss, but not on the ground. He felt the tip when his board descended on the metal underground, felt the air rush by him as he was on his way down down down… everything blurred, was reduced to light and shadow… he focused on his feet, on the board vibrating beneath them, worked against the wobble in his legs…

_I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm… _

The ramp was gone, everything seemed to stop for a second as he was flying, actually flying, through the air. He felt the hard deck of his board as if was glued to the soles of his sneakers. He spread his arms like an eagle, the adrenaline pumped through his veins and he heard himself yell, his voice echoing through the empty corridors, no words, just a yell of victory.

He heard a rushing of wings somewhere, probably startled doves fleeing their sleeping places.

Then he hit the ground hard and for a split second he knew he was going to crash… and he raced across the hard smooth floor, faster and faster, barely dodging a concrete pillar, taking a left turn, almost toppling over, but just almost, getting his footing back and finally his body slowed down, but his mind kept racing on.

_I did it. I did it. I did it. _

Ron and Grey were suddenly with him, surrounding him on their boards, clapping his shoulders. “Look at you, Daniel, you did it!” Ron let loose a triumphant howl and they jumped off their boards, hands gripping shoulders as they were laughing and pulling each other in a weird group hug.

“You're officially a man now,” Ron said with a twinkle in his eyes and Daniel couldn't stop laughing at that. “Hey! I'm serious, you idiot. That bomb isn't for sissies.” Ron smacked the side of his head.

“Sorry,” Daniel wheezed. “Just…” He shook his head and as the adrenaline left his body, he grinned. “Thank you. For making me a man, Ron.”

He took the escalator five more times after that. Each time he was less of a jitterbug and gained more confidence. When he rode it the last time, Ron was right behind him, followed by Grey and their voices cut through the deserted halls of Spring Mall, bringing some life back into it, scaring the doves, whirling up the dust.

Then Tara burst in, squealing with delight, when she saw them riding out the wave of their bomb. “You did it! And I missed it!” She hugged him so hard, he thought she was going to break his ribs. And then he had to do it again, just so she could see him do it.

And he did.

As the day was drawing to an end and the four of them were perched on top of the escalator together, clinking bottles of coke and sharing a bag of peanut flips Daniel felt oddly at peace with himself and his life, something he had rarely, if ever, experienced before when he had been with his 'new friends'. Somewhere deep down he had still felt like the odd one out.

His true friends had always been his family. They were his home, his anchoring circle of trust. Maybe it was time to let others in – as much as he could – to some extent.

  


It took Daniel two days to make a decision. And when he had made up his mind, it still took him a while to figure out the best way to go at this.

He finished the translation he had been working on for the greater part of this morning and sent the file to the civilian consultant of SG-2 with a couple of footnotes on how to interpret some of the very strange metaphors used in the text.

Then he took the dog with him as mental back up and a moment later he strolled into one of the archeological labs where BD was bent over a couple of scrolls and an old tome about medieval Greece linguistics.

“Hey, you up for a coffee break?” Daniel waved his empty mug.

BD looked up from the pages he was leafing through and grinned. “I'm always up for a coffee break.” He carefully stacked the scrolls and carried them over to another work counter.

Daniel filled both their cups and added milk and two sugars. “Got cookies?”

“Yep.” A bag of oatmeal cookies was pulled from a drawer and put on the desk. “How's the Sanskrit coming along?”

“It's done. I was right – it's based on an old Indio-Aryan language.”

“Isn't Sanskrit in general based on that?”

“Yeah, but it has changed over the centuries. This dialect didn't change much. But it has some weird additional symbols and words I've never seen before, some alien influence. But I figured most of it out.”

“Good job.” BD carefully moved the book aside to make space for their coffee mugs on his desk.

When they had both settled on chairs and were nibbling on their cookies, Daniel cleared his throat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what's up?”

“I'm… I'm invited to Halloween party.”

“Really? That's great! Are you going to party with Tara, Ron and Grey?” Then, after a pause, “Unless you don't want to go. Then… well, then don't go. Or are you feeling obligated to go?”

“No, I, uh, I'd like to go.”

“Oh, okay, good.”

“We want to shoot a video at the party. Some vampire spooky thing, you know, to post on YouTube. I'd like to borrow one of our field cameras and a stand. And two of the portable headlights.”

BD pursed his lips. “Isn't there a photography class at the Rainbow Center? Might be easier to ask them to lend you their equipment?”

_Oh, great. Here we go._ Daniel tried his best winning smile. “Ye-ah, but, uh… we're not going to that party. So we need to bring our own stuff. Our field cameras are great for shooting in the dark and I won't let anyone else play with them. I'll make sure it stays in one piece. I mean, these cams are made for the field, so they're not easy to break anyway, right?”

“No, they only cost a couple of hundred dollars,” BD said dryly.

“I won't need the thermal ones.”

“Still...” BD frowned and put his coffee down. “Daniel, where exactly is this party going to be?”

“Uh, in town?”

“In town, where?”

Daniel gazed at the stuffed to the rim book shelves and cases filled with scrolls and stone tablets.

“Where we skate sometimes.” He picked a black heavy stone sculpture, a carved goat head of unknown purpose BD used as a paperweight, and traced its accurate carved features with a finger as he waited for his grown-up version to respond to this new information.

“The mysterious place we're not supposed to know about.” BD didn't sound surprised at all.

“Yes. And again – it's not a dangerous place.” Well, not dangerous like Netu had been. Or being on board a Goa'uld mothership would be. Or going through the gate, period. “Look, we're just going to dress up and skate and eat junk food. And shoot a video.”

“Just the four of you?”

“Yes.”

BD gave him a knowing look. “Are you asking me if you can borrow the camera or are you asking me to give you green light to go to that party?”

“Both?” His bottom lip caught between his teeth and he quickly let go of it. “I mean, if you think it's okay, you could, you know, maybe, uh, talk to Jack or back me up on this?”

He almost smiled when BD mirrored his own bad habit, biting his lip, as he put away the cookie bag and brushed a hand over the tome on his desk. “Daniel...”

“What? You just said it's cool.” Daniel could hear the whining in his own voice, but the words were out before he could hold them back. He crossed his arms and then dropped them again, to his sides, trying not to sulk on top of the whining.

“I think it's cool you're going to a party. I don't think it's a cool idea to go out someplace 'in town' and party through the night, or at least part of the night. Or were you going to have an afternoon party?”

“Well, no, but what's the difference...”

“The difference is that you'll be out god knows where after dark, doing god knows what...” He blinked and groaned. “Oh god, I sound like Jack.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Okay, let me… rephrase this… It's a secret party at a secret location and your friends are going to tell their folks the party is… where?”

Daniel sighed. “At the center.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh, what?” He tried not to sound pissed. He really did. But, oh, man, honestly…

“You see how there's a conflict right there, right?”

“Yes, but c'mon, Daniel… when you were… when we were teens, we never told anyone where we were going if we could get away with it.”

“Most of the time no one really cared where we were going. And by 'going' you mean all the hours we spent at the library? I don't consider that a bad place to go.”

“We went to Central Park to feed ducks. Alone. We also took the metro to go all over the city to escape the bullies when they hunted us down in front of the library. We spent hours going from one metro to the other, reading or doing homework, just to be left alone. And no one knew where we were. No cell phones, no GPS trackers,” Daniel reminded his doppelganger.

BD sighed. “Me saying times were different back then won't go over well, huh?”

“Nope.”

“And they are going to have that party whether you will be part of it or not.”

“Yep.” Daniel knew he had almost won BD over. “Look, I know you're the one who supported me when I didn't want to tell you guys where we skate. You talked Jack into dropping his overprotective act and convinced him not to make me spill, right? I know it had to be you because he would never have stopped pestering me otherwise.” Daniel had never questioned Jack's change of heart on this topic, he had just been grateful it had happened, but he had always been sure that BD had talked some sense into Jack.

BD turned away from him, carrying the huge old tome to one of the bookshelves and shoving it into its spot. “Jack isn't stupid, you know.”

Daniel put the goat rock down. “What?”

“Granted, he is overprotective and he worries because you… we have gone AWOL, got hurt...”

“Died,” Daniel threw in a bit sheepishly.

“Ye-ah, that, too. We all carry around some PTDS issues and you know what his is.”

Daniel swallowed hard. He hadn't seen this coming. And it was very sobering. “Yeah.”

“But he's trying. He's trying hard, Daniel. Giving you the freedom you want and need. To not treat you like you're really just thirteen years old. If he treated you like that your boundaries would be a lot more tight and you know that, too.”

He felt the heat creep into his face. “I know,” he said even though there was a voice inside his head muttering that Jack could try _harder_. It was that same old voice from years ago when he'd first been 'shrunk' – the voice insisting he could take care of himself at all times and in any situation, little or not. He hadn't heard that particular voice in a while once he'd finally settled into this new life, but it had slowly started to try and get his attention again, here and there lately.

Teen hormones, weird brain chemicals, most likely.

For a moment BD looked at him as if he was trying to decide what to say next or if he should say anything else at all.

Daniel raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“You might think he sometimes forgets who… what you are, but he doesn't. Not for a minute. And maybe that's actually part of the problem, too.”

“But I'm just out there skateboarding with friends, finding a way to be a teenager. Isn't that exactly what everyone has kept telling me for years? To go out more, to explore this childhood thing, to treat it as a gift?” He threw up his hands. “Doc Murphy said it's great, it's good for me. And maybe he's right. For the first time since this happened to me I feel less than a freak around other kids and a little bit more like… the age my body appears to be.”

“Yes, and Jack knows that, too, and he's doing everything to support you, but it's… hard for him.”

Daniel sighed. “Then maybe he should talk to Doc Murphy. About _his_ issues, not mine.”

“He has,” BD said quietly.

Daniel blinked. “He… has?”

“Yes, back in the summer.”

“I had no idea.”

“He didn't want you to know. And if you tell him I told you, I'm dead.”

Daniel absently pushed his chair away and stood. So Jack had gone to see the Doc and that was the reason he had backed off somewhat when it came to Daniel being out in town on his own.

He sighed.

BD gave him a lopsided smile and shook his head. “Here's the deal. You can have the camera and the headlights if Jack agrees to let you go to that party.”

Oh. Joy. “Are you gonna...”

“No. That's between the two of you.”

“But you're the other half of my parental unit, c'moooon, Daniel...” Back came the whine. He cleared his throat. “I mean… please?”

“You talk to him. If he keeps balking, I'll see what I can do,” BD said finally and shooed him off, insisting he had work to do.

Daniel took Flyboy for a walk. He stopped by Jack's office to ask him to join him, but Jack was in a briefing so he went alone. As he threw sticks for his dog and played a round of Frisbee with him, he mulled his conversation with BD over in his head.

Jack used to talk to his former therapist, Doc Svenson, from time to time when Daniel had been eight or nine. But back then the situation had been different, they had both been in desperate need for help and guidance. Things were so much better these days and while they still had their quarrels, Daniel never imagined that Jack would seek out Doc Murphy's help.

But then again their last fight had been a bit similar to how it used to be in those early months after the downsizing and it was probably a good thing Jack had done it. Daniel knew Doc Murphy backed him up on his need for more freedom and apparently Jack was listening to him.

_Jack just has to get over it. I'm not his munchkin anymore, not even physically, and I'm going to that party,_ he thought with new conviction.

Flyboy came dashing towards him at full speed, almost knocking him off his feet and Daniel let himself be carried away into a game of running and jumping over small dead tree trunks and into heaps of half-frozen leaves and small drifts of snow.

  


It was already getting dark by the time they were on their way home. BD still had work to finish and promised to bring pizza later. Daniel didn't know if he was trying to give him and Jack space to talk or if he really had to stay. It wasn't uncommon for BD to come home later. They still had to be careful and never left the mountain in the same car or at exact the same time. And several times a week BD took a detour to his house to get his mail and water his flowers or mow the lawn.

“We need dog food,” Daniel reminded Jack when they left the highway.

“I know. Hey, there's a new Halloween shop at Chapel Hills. They got Harry Potter stuff on sale. We could put our candy in a cauldron this year.”

“Sure, let's check it out,” Daniel agreed readily. Maybe he would find some stuff they needed for the party. Tara had texted him with a list.

Halloween City was on the ground floor, right by the main entrance of Chapel Hills Mall. A giant black and white mask from the Scream movies hung over the entrance and whenever people passed by, the laughter of a maniac serial killer – or worse – cackled from a speaker.

Daniel felt a huge web waft above their heads as they walked in and when he looked up he spotted several black plastic spiders with glowing green eyes sitting in the cobwebs.

They grabbed a cart and headed over to the Harry Potter 'on sale' section. Jack chose a black cauldron with yellow icky spots of fake glob sticking to it. Like some potion had boiled over.

“You need a wand,” Daniel decided and headed to the wand section. “Hey, look, you can choose wands from any of the characters!” He pulled a small box out and read the description. “Eleven inches, made of holly and possesses a phoenix feather. That's Harry's wand!”

“Cool! C'mon, and check this out!” Jack waved him over to an aisle of rubber masks. He picked a Snape, put it on and growled, “You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? I may never wash my hair and smell like a dead skunk, but I'm still the Halfblood prince!”

Daniel sniggered and, when he was sure that no one was paying attention to them, pulled the Potter wand from its box, drew it against 'Snape' and muttered, “Soapallover!”

Snape cocked his head. “What kind of spell is that supposed to be?”

“I don't know the spell for getting the grease out of Snape's hair, so I thought something with soap might work.”

Jack snorted and put Snape back on the wall. “What about a Dobbie one?” He pulled it on and squeaked, “Harry Potter has given Dobbie a sock! Dobbie is a free elf! But Harry Potter should have given Dobbie pants instead!”

Daniel couldn't help but burst out laughing. Jack's Dobbie impersonation was even better than the Snape one. “You should be a voice actor,” he suggested when they continued cruising the shop.

“God, yeah, I could work for The Simpsons.”

“A dream coming true,” Daniel teased. He found spider webbing stretch and threw several bags into the cart.

Jack raised his eyebrows, “Isn't that a bit much?”

“Can't have enough spider web.” Daniel quickly grabbed a handful of rubber spiders and then stopped in front of a shelf with all kind of candles. He chose six black pillar candles.

When he looked around for Jack he found him in another aisle, inspecting a rather oriental looking costume. Daniel walked over and read the label. “The King of Egypt.”

Jack's fingers brushed over the traditional Shendyt skirt, a kilt like garment worn in ancient Egypt. The costume featured an Egyptian collar with an attached gold cape, gold wrist gauntlets, a striped Egyptian head piece and even an Eye of Horus necklace. The Shendyt skirt had an embellished waistband.

“Forget it,” Daniel said. “You'll never get BD to wear this.”

“A guy can dream,” Jack muttered.

“Why would you… no, no, don't tell me. I have a pretty good idea.” Daniel quickly moved on to the next aisle.

Tombstones.

“I wish we could have a coffin,” he muttered as he looked at bottles labeled as 'Blood wine' stacked beside the tombstones.

“Too bad we gave away Hathor's sarcophagus, eh?” Jack inspected the tombstones. “I want that one to be mine when I'm gone.”

“_Well, this sucks_?” Daniel read the saying on it. “Not 'I ate Bart's shorts and choked on 'em'?” He pointed at another one.

Jack sighed. “Oh, the choices, they are tough.”

“Barry M. Deep,” Daniel read another one. “Very creative.” He glanced at the prices. They had a 'buy three, pay for two' offer. They were foldable and a sign on the packages labeled them as 'easy to set up'. He loaded three folded stones into his cart. Thankfully they weren't heavy. Probably made from styrofoam or something. Their appearance was pretty realistic though; painted in gray and black they looked like weathered rock with fissures and cracks. Some even had blue-ish lichen on them.

“You're really getting into this, eh?” Jack pointed at a skeleton cat with red eyes perched on a shelf. “It could sit on one of the tombstones.” Then he took the cart from Daniel and headed back to the Harry Potter aisle. “Let's get a Voldemort mask.”

“Oh, you wear the mask when you open the door! I know kids are gonna get a kick out of that!”

Jack grinned. “Exactly! I need a cloak, too. And you get to be Harry. I'll open the door and you jump out at me from behind and slay me with your wand. What do you think? Here!” A mask, two cloaks and a Gryffindor scarf ended up in their cart. “Go, grab two wands, will ya?”

“Uh, Jack...” Great. How was he going to get out of this one now? And the worst of it was that he liked the idea. It sounded like fun.

Jack looked at their overflowing cart, then back at him. “What? Too much?”

“No. No, it's a great idea. It's just, I...” He made an effort not to stare at his sneakers, but look at Jack. “I'm going toa party.”

Up went the eyebrow. “A party.”

“Yeah. You know, with Tara and the guys.” When Jack's eyebrow didn't come down he added, “Sorry I didn't tell you before. I needed time to decide if I wanted to go or not.”

They both looked at the cart then and after a moment of uncomfortable silence Jack waved at the bags of webbing. “Swell. So, all this is for the party, huh?”

“Um, yeah. The tombstones, too.”

“Right. About time you get a social life, eh? Can't hang out with us old zombies all the time.”

Daniel returned the wry smile and watched as the Gryffindor scarf, the cloaks and the Voldemort mask went back onto the shelves and clothes rack. “Anything else you need?”

Daniel looked at his list. “Fake blood.”

“You need food color for that, mix with corn and chocolate syrup. It's cheaper.”

“Oh, okay. We can get all that over at Walmart, right?”

“Yep.” Jack pushed the cart and walked over to the check out.

Wow, that was easy. Daniel let out a huff of relief.

Except…

_He's not a happy camper._ But Daniel stomped that niggling feeling of guilt down and focused on the fact that he had basically gotten the green light for Halloween.

When he followed Jack to the register he spotted a small black rubber bat with velvet wings hanging upside down from a perch in a bird's cage with bloody bones scattered at the bottom of the cage. He checked the price and decided to fork out the money for it. And for the skeleton cat Jack had shown him earlier.

Jack was already paying for his cauldron when Daniel joined him. He piled up all his goods and got his debit card out. Jack didn't offer to pay for Daniel's Halloween decorations. It wasn't a problem because Daniel liked paying for his own stuff, but he had a feeling that Jack would have insisted on paying for all of it, if it had been for Halloween at home.

Or maybe he was imagining things.

They loaded their bags into the truck and then they were off to Walmart for dog food and groceries. Daniel got red food color and corn syrup. Jack said there was a bottle of chocolate syrup in their pantry he could use.

When they were on their way home Daniel had to ask.

“Are you okay with me going out on Halloween?” He glanced at Jack's profile, but there was no twitch of the jaw and no roll of the eyes. Jack stayed focused on the traffic.

“Sure.” There was a quick glance in his direction. “Kids should go out on Halloween. Go out, dress up, have fun. Let loose.”

“Oh, okay. Good. I just… I wasn't sure if you'd...”

“What? Let you go?”

“Uh, ye-ah. Because… because it'll be late.”

“Daniel or I are going to pick you up, don't worry about it.”

“Uh, you don't have to pick me up. I'll take my bike. It's no big deal.”

Jack pursed his lips, not quite a scowl, yet. “There's a forecast for sleet and fog next week. You're not riding your bike in that weather, especially not in the middle of the night.”

Daniel opted for not arguing for the moment. Right now he was just floored that there were no annoying questions like where, when, how long, who else would be there. He glanced at Jack, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Jack turned on the radio and that was that.

Wow.

He wondered if BD had already talked to Jack after all, but he'd rather bite his tongue than ask. He'd just take it as it was.


	5. Chapter 5

_Double, double toil and trouble;_

_Fire burn and caldron bubble._

William S.

**V**

Once all the groceries were put away Daniel went to his room and texted Tara, Ron and Grey to tell them what he had bought. He was about to tell them that Jack had said yes to him going to the party, but then, somehow, he didn't.

After a while of texting back and forth among each other they decided to open a room on AIM and moments later Daniel was comfortable on his bed with his laptop, chatting.

Tara sent them a song she wanted to do the video about. A love song. A very sad love song.

_'Bowie?'_ Daniel typed. He opened his browser and looked it up. From a movie soundtrack apparently. He had never heard of it before, but when he started to play it, he had to admit it was sad and dramatic and romantic – in a sad kind of way.

_'No love story. It must all be about blood and kills'_ Ron objected with several skull emojis underlining his words.

_'All about blood and killing is boring'_ Tara sent them hearts and rainbows. _'Drama and love has the thrill. With some blood and killing as cherries on top.'_

_'Vampires can fall in love?'_ Grey wasn't convinced.

_'I read Twilight. They can. And when they do it's eternal and passionate and dramatic.'_ Tara added more hearts, then typed, _'Of course Bella is acting like a lovesick chic all the time and Edward is a bit of a creepy stalker, but the feels of their love is epic.'_

_'Bella? Edward?'_ Daniel, Ron and Grey typed at once.

_'Girl and vampire boy from Twilight. Anyway… here's my story for the vid. The vampire puts a spell on the girl – that would be me – to fall in love with him and she does and he does anything to enchant her and lure her into his tomb. He bites her and she turns and together they rule the vampire world.'_

_'Wait, why the stereotype thing?'_ A couple of question marks hovered across Daniel's screen when Ron was done typing._'We shouldn't do that. We should have two guys. I'm the vampire, Grey can be my prey. And I can fall for him if I have to.'_

_'And what am I supposed to be? Your mom?'_

_'Do I have to kiss you'_ Grey asked. _'Because I'm not sure Zack's going to like that.'_ Zack was the boy Grey was currently dating.

_'Screw Zack'_ was Ron's only comment on that one.

_'Maybe some day.'_

_'Why don't we have an orgy?' _Tara asked with a tongue-out emoji.

_'It doesn't go with the song'_ Daniel threw in before Ron would get a new vision about this video. _'We have to settle on some sort of choreo and script soon.'_

_'I have some ideas, but we have to meet tomorrow and practice. Bring your boards to the center. And if it rains we have to go to the mall.'_ Tara wrote.

_'Put your thinking heads on, guys. I gotta go. My internet time is up. If I don't get off now my mom will come in here and yell at me.'_ Ron let them know.

_'Since when does that bother you?'_ Grey asked.

_'Dude, she threatened to take away my laptop and she might even do it. I'm off.' _The screen showed AIM's message 'BadassNo1 has left the room'.

_'Yeah, gotta go too. Dinner and homework and stuff. See you tomorrow.' '_GreyasGandalf has left the room'.

_'Did you ask the general about the party?'_ Tara wanted to know.

“D'oh,” Daniel muttered, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. If he told her yes, and then Jack changed his mind because of the sketchy location, he'd feel like an idiot. He replied, _'Am working on it. Daniel knows. He's worried because I won't tell him where it is.'_

_'It'd be easier for everyone involved if you just tell them you're at the center, trust me.' After a moment she added, ‘Yeah, I know you’re not gonna do that. Sorry, my bad.’_

_'Easy isn't always better.'_

_'I really hope you can be there, Daniel. We'll have so much fun. I gotta go now.'_ Tara sent Daniel a heart and a rainbow and then 'Tinkerbell has left the room'.

He shut the laptop down and picked one of the books from the pile on his nightstand. It was 'Gods, Graves and Scholars', a book about the history of archeology itself. Daniel found it to be pretty entertaining.

And he didn't really want his mind getting into the question of how much trouble he would be in if he kept trying to dodge the 'where is the party' part with Jack.

_You’ve been there before and you ended up being grounded,_ he reminded himself.

_If Jack and Daniel weren't so damn uptight about this I wouldn't even have to think about lying. They should just let me go without making a big deal out of it,_ he thought.

_And if you weren't such a coward you'd just go to that party no matter what Jack has to say about it, but you're a good little boy and __accept__ their boundaries, aren't you? _his old foe, the snippy voice mocked him_._

“Shut up,” Daniel mumbled.

He had finally managed to immerse himself in the excitement of unearthing the remains of the city of Troy when there was knock at his door and BD popped his head in. “Pizza Service! Come get it while it's still hot.”

Daniel sighed. He wasn't even hungry. And it had been days since he had found time to read. “I'll eat here,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off the page.

“You have to come and get your pieces, I brought two large pizzas with cheesy crust.”

“Why couldn't you just bring regular pizza for each of us?” Daniel pulled a bookmark out from between the pile of books and placed it between the pages.

“Because large with cheesy crust was on special offer and I thought it was a good idea.” BD cocked his head. “Did you talk to Jack about the party?”

“Yeah. I have a go.” Daniel put the book back on his pile. “Cool, huh? Whatever Doc Murphy said to him really seemed to have put his head straight about some things.”

“You told him where this party is going to be? Or rather that it'll be somewhere 'in town'?”

“Nope, he didn't ask.” Daniel got up to get his part of the pizza, but BD crossed his arms and blocked the door.

“_He didn't ask_?”

“No.”

“And so what? You think this is a new game of Don't ask, don't tell? Do I need to remind you of what happened in August?”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “What do you want from me? I told him I'm going to a party and he said yes.”

BD didn't budge. “Are you going to tell him or should I?”

Daniel tried to stay calm while all he wanted was to throw all his teenage frustration at Big him and basically tell him to go to hell and leave him alone. When BD didn't move and kept glaring at him he finally huffed. “Fine! I'll tell him. And then what? He won't let me go unless I tell him where the party is and then I'll be stuck spending Halloween at home anyway because he won't let me go either way. Thank you for ruining this for me, Daniel. Just when I can finally have this!”

“_This_?”

“Yes, this. Getting some fun out of being a teen again. When this… do-over is giving me a chance to do all the things teens do.”

BD shook his head. “It's one party. There'll be others. Besides, I'm not trying to sabotage you.”

“No? Could've fooled me,” Daniel spat. Then he straightened up and snapped, “I'll tell him. And if he says no, I… I'll go anyway.” Okay, he yelled. Yes, he yelled and it was making his face glow with embarrassment and anger, but that didn't stop himself from storming out and marching into the kitchen like a bull who had seen a red flag.

He grabbed a plate, smacked the cupboard doors shut, slapped two slices of pizza on the plate and returned to his room, past a worried looking BD, and slammed the door so hard that the pile of books on his nightstand started swaying and then crashed to the floor.

“Fuck it,” he hissed, put his plate on the now empty nightstand, stepped over the scattered books and slumped back on his bed.

The immediate storm passed as quickly as it had risen.

He stared at the ceiling for several long minutes, trying to sort this out. He knew he was being irrational and over reacting. But this frustration sometimes got the better of him, just like it used to when he had been younger and needed anchoring and – up to a point – guidance. But he wasn't that little messed up kid anymore, he was going to be an adult again in just a couple of years. And he didn't need the same kind of paternal protection now.

Well, okay, he did. Maybe. Sometimes. But they were talking about a party here, not about him wanting to travel the world or go through the gate on his own.

He sighed and glared at his closed door, still angry. He knew exactly what would happen if he walked into the living room now, demanding to be heard. He would most likely lose his temper again and end up in the basement.

So he better go down there right away to let off some of the steam.

Daniel got up, quickly changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt and, leaving his pizza untouched for the moment, went down into his gym.

Fifteen minutes on the treadmill melted away his frustration and kick-started a more rational train of thoughts. He picked up speed and kept his breathing even and calm as he kept running.

It was just a stupid party.

_Yes, and ask yourself in how much trouble you're willing to get just to go to a party? _

He sighed. It wasn't that he was afraid of whatever consequences going to a party without permission would be in store for him. Sometimes doing what he felt was right was worth all the hassle.

What he really hated was how getting in trouble because of his own stubborness made him _feel_. How being on the receiving end of Jack's anger or disappointment when he actually screwed up seemed to reduce him to that kid he so often denied being.

And how it proved the point that being closer to the age of consent again than five or six years ago didn't mean he always had the capability of acting like he was there yet.

Still, he really wanted to go to that party. And staying here, sulking, wasn't going to get him there. He just had to rely on his extra charming youth and wit to talk Jack into letting him go.

Or spend Halloween watching The Treehouse of Horror. But he wouldn't know if he didn't at least try.

He slowed the treadmill down until his breathing had returned to a normal pace and finally stepped off and pulled his sweat soaked shirt over his head. He threw it into the hamper and grabbed one of the towels from the shelf by the door to dry his face and run it over his arms and chest.

Shower time.


	6. Chapter 6

_A father is neither an anchor to hold us back nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way._

_(Unknown)_

**VI**

Jack and BD were in the living room slouched in opposite corners of the couch with their feet up, playing a lazy game of footsie while they were eating their pizza slices. The dog was by the fireplace, chomping on a chewing bone.

Daniel had showered, put on new sweatpants and a sweatshirt and taken his plate of cold pizza with him.

“Work out?” Jack gave him a questioning look.

“Um, yep.”

“Did the work out... work?” BD asked.

“Guess so.”

They made space for him in the middle of the couch and he slumped down and balanced the plate on his knees. The pizza, even cold, was delicious after all the running and he dug in. He glanced at BD, making quick eye contact. “It's great.”

It didn't happen often that he and BD were at odd ends with one another or downright mad at each other. That was more a thing between Daniel and Jack. But on the odd occasion when it happened they always made up fast.

“I pride myself in making the best pizza of the galaxy,” BD smirked.

“And all he needs is his car and credit card,” Jack added.

Daniel grinned between two bites of cheesy crust, ham and pastrami. “Magical.”

BD put his empty plate on the coffee table and pushed himself off the couch. “I'm going to walk the dog tonight.” He patted his stomach. “Too much cheesy crust.” He whistled for Flyboy and Daniel watched them retreat into the hallway. A moment later the front door clicked shut.

Somehow the pizza didn't taste all that good anymore.

He pushed the last slice around on his plate. He felt Jack's eyes on him.

“Why does this have to be so complicated?” He placed the plate on the coffee table.

“Because life is complicated?” Jack eyed the leftover pizza. “You gonna eat that?”

Daniel grimaced. “Help yourself.”

Jack snatched it and nibbled. “Mmmmh, cheese.”

“Jack?” He looked at his hands. “You know how much I hate having to ask you for… permission…” He took a deep breath. “Even after all this time… It was easier for a while, but somehow now it's getting… difficult again.”

“It's not like I make you ask for permission for a lot of things,” Jack reminded him quietly.

“No. No, I know, and I appreciate that, really, I do, it's just...”

“It's just that there are some things I want to know about. And other things I have to keep an eye on. I'm responsible for you because by law you're a minor whether you like it or not.”

Daniel sighed. “I know.”

They sat in silence. Jack finished the pizza and Daniel got tired of gazing at his hands. He took a deep breath and turned to face his friend. His dad. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really want to go to that party. It means a lot to me. When I was this age the first time around no one invited me to parties.” He frowned. “Not that I wanted to go to parties. At least not that I remembered. But maybe… now I'm beginning to think that not being invited to parties or anywhere else was probably the reason I never wanted to go in the first place.”

“Denial is bliss?”

“Something like that.”

Jack turned towards him, getting comfortable in his corner of the couch. “I said you can go to that party and I meant it. Where's the confusion here, Daniel?”

“Ye-ah, but you don't know the whole story.” He picked at a lose threat of the old afghan on the couch. “The party isn't at the Rainbow Center. Or at any other public location in town that hosts Halloween parties for kids. And it's not at anyone's home either.”

Up went the eyebrow. “Oh?”

“And I can't tell you where it is,” Daniel blurted out.

“Because you took an oath sealed with blood that you won't tell anyone.”

If only he could make Jack see his point. “Look, it was their place long before they took me there for the first time. And they decided to keep it a secret. At first I only considered myself something like a tolerated guest, but I think I finally belong there. I don't want to risk that.”

It was hard to read Jack's facial expression, but at least he wasn't angry. His brown eyes were holding Daniel's gaze for a long moment. “You really do like those kids.”

“Yes. As strange as it might seem, but I do. They are so different from how I… used to be as a kid. I'd never thought I'd hang out with other kids and actually like it, but there it is.” He felt a little bit anxious again when he continued, “I mean, you met them. And you never said anything, but you seem to like them… BD likes them. And they're okay, really.”

“Oh, I think they're alright. Bit flaky, maybe, bit reckless probably, but alright.”

Daniel let out a sigh of relief and at the same time he was surprised how important it seemed to be that Jack liked his other friends. He hadn't realized this until now. “Does that mean I can still go to the party?”

Jack cocked his head. “Who else is gonna be there?”

“Just the four of us.” As an afterthought he added, “I can take Flyboy.” He knew Jack always seemed to be more relaxed about Daniel being out on his own when Flyboy was with him.

“Any chance there'll be alcohol, drugs?”

Oh, Geez… He opened his mouth to say, “No, of course not,” and then decided staying on the path of truth was his best option here. “Ron might bring some beer or malternativs if he can get his hands on it. And he does smoke occasionally.”

“Of course he does,” Jack deadpanned.

“But just regular cigarettes, no weed. And we are going to skate and shoot this vampire video. Getting drunk isn't exactly on our agenda. We might all get high on sugar though. Tara and Grey are going to bring tons of candy.”

“Fair enough. Getting high on candy is mandatory on Halloween,” Jack smirked. “Remember when we made all that gross looking food for Teal'c's Halloween education 101?”

Daniel grinned. “He was very impressed.”

“You had so many peanutbutter chocolate fingers I thought you were going to puke all night. And then you kept digging into the trick or treating bowl, pinching all the Hershey Spooky Shapes when you thought I wasn't looking.”

Daniel felt his cheeks getting warm. “I thought you weren't noticing. You didn't say anything.”

Jack shrugged. “I thought a lesson is best learned through...”

“...natural consequences, I know I know. But hey, I didn't throw up.” He stuck his tongue out at Jack and then laughed when one of the small throw pillows was tossed at him. “And we watched Dawn of the Dead and Halloween and we had that bet, remember that? You said I was going to have nightmares or wouldn't even make it through the movies without hiding my face under the blanket. And you lost.”

“Uh-huh, and I remember someone sneaking into my room in the middle of the night and crawling into bed with me, pretending he felt queasy from all the chocolate.”

Daniel tossed the pillow back at Jack. “I wasn't scared. Much.”

The truth was he had been haunted by nightmares so bad that night, he was sure the zombies from Dawn of the Death were in his closet. Just like the dead guy he had seen when he'd been infected with one of Machellos little bugs. And in his nightmares the Machello zombie had somehow multiplied and tried to come after him while he'd been stuck in MacKenzie's padded cell with no where to go.

Seeking refuge in Jack's bed had been the logical thing to do. After all Jack was his team leader and it was his job to keep him safe. And that Halloween night Daniel hadn't argued with that logic at all.

Jack had made room for him and asked if he needed some Emetrol, but Daniel had just burrowed himself under the blanket by his side and latched onto his hand.

Jack had never teased him about being scared the next day, but of course he had known.

He often knew what was going on in Daniel's head. Just knew. Maybe because they had spent so many years being close or maybe because the downsizing had resurrected his daddy instincts. But despite all their ups and downs and arguments Daniel had always thought that Jack 'got' him better than anyone else, sometimes even better than Daniel himself.

He blinked as a sudden realization hit him. “You knew.”

“What?”

“You knew right away I wasn't going to the center party.”

“I had a hunch.”

“But… how?”

Jack gave him a crooked smile. “My spidey senses.”

“I'm not buying that.” Daniel frowned, then moaned. “Of course you know I'm not a fan of big crowded parties with loud music and cheerful stupid games. That was probably an easy one.”

“I figured that while your perspective on some things has changed, you're still you.”

“And you still said yes.” Daniel tried to wrap his head around that.

“I did.”

“Wow.” He took off his glasses and polished them at the hem of his shirt. “You should, uh, probably know that BD made me tell you that the party isn't at the center.”

“Well, it was hard not to hear you yelling at him at the top of your lungs. Or the way you almost brought the house down when you slammed your door.”

“Um… sorry?” The tip of his ears felt very hot. “I probably would have told you anyway,” he finally murmured, embarrassment lacing his voice.

“I know.”

“And despite of what I said about going even if you said no...”

“Let's not dwell.”

Daniel blinked. “I can go then, right? And hey, they are going to party there with or without me, but if I'm there they'll even have adult supervision, right?”

Jack snorted and rolled his eyes. “Smartass.”

Daniel was on his feet to run to his room and text the others the good news, but a tug at his sweater had him back on the couch. “Oh,” he grinned a bit sheepishly. “Conditions, huh?”

Jack held up one finger. “You'll be home at midnight. Sharp.” The second finger came up. “You make sure your phone is fully charged and with you.” Third finger. “If there's sleet or snow I'm going to drop you off in walking distance from wherever that party is and you're going to take a cab home or call us.” Fourth finger. “You are going to wear your helmet.” He paused and gave Daniel as prompting look.

“Okay.”

The last finger came up. At least Daniel hoped it would be the last one. “If there's any kind of trouble or if you feel uncomfortable for whatever reason, you'll come home or call.”

“I will.” When Daniel had been younger Jack used to make him repeat these lists of conditions or rules to make sure he had paid attention and got all his memos. He really hoped he didn't have to do that now.

“You got the helmet part?” Jack asked.

“Yes. And the midnight part. And everything else.”

“So, when does your Halloween bash start?”

“At 19:00.” Daniel had a sudden idea. “I could help you hand out candy until I have to go. I bet the younger kids will come around early.”

Jack pursed his lips. “You'll let me wear that Voldemort mask and dress up as Harry?”

“And slay you with my wand? You betcha!”

Jack checked his watch. “The Potter sale ends tonight. If we're fast...”

“I'll get dressed!” He was out of the room in a flash, hopping into his jeans and sneakers. In between he texted his friends to tell them he was going to come to the party. He got three thumb up emojis in return by the time he had closed his jacket.

When he returned to the hallway, Jack was putting a sticky note for BD on the kitchen door. It said: 'Daniel and I are raiding the Halloween Shop at Chapel Hills. We'll bring a costume for you!'

“He'll hate you for this,” Daniel warned.

“Oh, I have the perfect costume in mind for him,” Jack grinned.

“The King of Egypt costume?”

Jack just kept grinning as they backed out of the driveway.


	7. Chapter 7

_...but I'll be there for you _

_As the world falls down…_

_David Bowie_

**VII**

“There's something I want you to know.” Jack gazed out of the truck's windshield into the whirling snow. They had parked one block away from Spring Mall in front of an apartment house. Several people passed by, probably in a hurry to get inside somewhere and out of the wet cold.

Unfazed by the weather there had been hoards of kids coming to their house earlier and Jack had done his best Voldemort expression, making boys and girls screech and giggle and then screech again when Daniel aka Harry Potter had jumped out from the dark hallway putting spells on Voldemort.

It had been fun and the afternoon had gone by so fast.

Daniel was excited. The four kids had dragged decorations and everything else they needed out to the mall on their bikes all week. They had completed their costumes with the help of Tara's mom who worked her magic on the sewing machine. Now they all had matching cloaks much better tailored than the ones to buy at the Halloween shop. Those cloaks even had hoods big enough to cover a skater helmet. Ron had pimped up their fangs by painting a little blood on the tips. Grey and Daniel – with BD's assistance – had created fingerfood and gory cookies. Jack had donated all their old rattling skeletons and helped to build a coffin from foam board, duct tape and paint.

It had turned out pretty cool, actually.

Two days ago they had been ready to decorate and Daniel had done several screen tests to figure out lighting and other settings and how to move the camera, when it was best to put it on the stand and when it worked better to guide it by hand.

Now they were here.

And Jack had the air of trying to say something profound.

Daniel, a hand already on the doorhandle, paused and leaned back in his seat. “What?”

“I wasn't going to tell you, but Daniel said I should finally put you out of your misery.”

“What… misery?”

“Of not being able to tell us about your new skating grounds.” Jack's jaw muscle twitched and he actually seemed uncomfortable, almost a bit embarrassed, when he finally looked at him.

Daniel opened his mouth, then closed it again, then let out a gasp. “You… Oh, you didn't!”

“I didn't track you. I said I wouldn't do that unless there's danger ahead and I won't.”

“Then you… what? You followed me?” He got a huge bolt of satisfaction out of Jack actually cringing.

“Remember that day you ran and I went after you?”

“I remember that. But I got rid of you...”

Jack raised his eyebrow. “Hello? Special ops here?”

“You… you… I can't believe you did that! I can't… You jerk!” He smacked the seat belt lock and almost got slapped into his face by the buckle when the belt whipped back into its socket.

“Look, I'm not proud of it and I'm sorry, okay?” Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair. It gleamed more silver than it actually was in the light from the streetlamp right outside the truck.

“No, it's not okay!” He needed to get out of the truck, away from this traitor who pretended to be his dad. His best friend. But he didn't move, he just stared at Jack. “You are telling me you knew where I was going all this time and you never….” Daniel trailed off mid rant when he suddenly realized what exactly that meant. “You didn't tell anyone. You didn't tell Tara's dad. And you just kept letting me go.” He let that sink in for a moment and shook his head. “Why?”

“When we had that fight and you just stormed out in the middle of it I didn't think. I went after you with every intention of dragging you home and locking you into your room until you came to your senses,” Jack said, his voice laced with regret. “And after you thought you lost me, you didn't look back once. When I realized you were probably going to that place I figured it couldn't hurt to know where it is.”

Daniel worried his thumb and shrugged. “We were both mad. I said some pretty… nasty things.”

“Some of them I probably deserved.”

“Ditto.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, what changed your mind?”

“Huh?”

“About dragging me home and locking me away?”

Jack shook his head. “I had time to cool down somewhat on my way there.”

“That's… that's it? You calmed down and just decided to let it go?”

“Something like that?”

“Oh, come on, Jack, I'm not buying that. What did you do? Tell me you didn't go back there and install cameras? You didn't bug the mall, right?” He didn't really think Jack would go that far, but…

“No cameras and no bugging,” Jack said.

“I know I should be spitting mad at you,” Daniel ground out.

“Or you could be very grateful because I kept your little secret,” Jack pointed out a bit more sharply. “Especially in the light of the fact that what you brats are doing there is trespassing and that heads are gonna roll if you ever get hurt or caught in there. And don't you think I wasn't _this_ close to telling Tara's dad and putting an end to your new happy place.”

“But you didn't.” He still tried to wrap his head around that.

Jack let out a huff of air. “You finally found friends. I mean, real friends, not kids in need like Al. And you just… I don't know… the Doc says you're thriving, maybe that's it. You finally got comfortable in your own skin. Not just about yourself, but about socializing, coming out of your ivory tower, exploring your possibilities.” Jack shook his head. “There was a good chance I'd destroy all that again by interfering or by just not letting you go there anymore. BD and I decided sometimes the end justifies the means,” Jack raised his famous warning finger, “_up to a point_.”

Daniel crossed his arms and slumped deeper into his seat. “My gratefulness knows no bounds.”

“Daniel, I was your age once. I know how important it is for kids to have places like that. Places no pesky adult knows about. Some hideaway to dodge all the hassle at home or just to hang with friends. It's perfectly normal.” Jack gave him a sideways glance. “I'm just not used to you doing the perfectly normal stuff.”

“Well, thank you,” he muttered, but his sarcasm was dwindling fast and the satisfaction about Jack being uncomfortable and trying to explain himself – talking feelings – went out the window. He squinted over at Jack. “I know hanging out there isn't legal. But we're being careful.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. At least with you there's someone with them who is aware of the risks.”

“Thanks for… not taking it away from us.”

“I'm turning a blind eye. It's probably not the 'right' thing to do, but I decided to do it anyway and hope it won't come back to bite me. And I met Bob. He wanted to arrest me on that day I followed you in there.”

Daniel blinked. “You… did?”

“You partly owe it to him that I changed my mind. But...” Jack shrugged. “Look, I might have… maybe… needed some time to get used to you branching out the way you did this year. Took you a long time to get there and then suddenly you go from being the coolest little geek I know to being the coolest skater kid I know. From Spacemonkey to Skatemonkey like this.” Jack snapped his fingers and gave him a lopsided smile. “Old guy here needs time to adjust.”

“Oh.” When the clue bus suddenly hit him Daniel felt his throat getting tight and it took him a moment to speak with a steady voice. “I'm still me. I'm still the coolest geek you'll ever know. Well, maybe aside from BD. And you'll always be the best friend I ever had.” He struggled for words, then continued. “But you're also my dad. And no matter how awkward that was in the beginning, I'm glad you're my dad.”

“But dads have their time and place, eh?” Jack's smile bordered on the verge of sad, but his eyes twinkled with warm humor. “And they don't need to know everything.”

“You'll always know the important things about me, all the things that matter,” Daniel said quietly. “I never meant to hurt you, Jack. I...”

Jack shook his head. “Don't. BD read me the riot act a while ago and I do get it, I do. I'm sorry for being such a pain in the ass sometimes.”

“Remember when I said you're a jerk sometimes, but I still like you anyway? This is a great example for that.”

Jack reached over and cuffed his head and just like that they were back on solid normal ground. “Get outta here. And have fun. You need help with that coffin?”

“No, but since you're offering...” Daniel dodged another cuff to his head and slipped out the truck. He stood on the side walk for a moment, looking at the building on the others side of the road. His eyes traveled up the facade of red bricks to the windows of what he knew was apartment 8-3. There was light behind the drawn curtains.

“I never liked that place anymore after I had to drag you off your balcony.” Jack was beside him, following his gaze.

“I liked it. It was where we first got together.” Then Daniel shook himself out of that and they went to load the coffin from the truck's bed. It was wrapped in a plastic tarp to keep the paint dry.

“You sure you don't want me to drive you the rest of the way?” Jack lifted the coffin up and handed it over to Daniel who carried it on top of his head, carefully balancing it out. It weighed very little, but was bulky.

“Tara is waiting for me at the next corner to help with this.” Daniel looked at Jack from under his coffin. “Are you sure midnight won't be too early for me to show up at home? After all you're going to spend Halloween with the King of Egypt.” He frowned. “What are you going to wear?”

Jack smirked. “Nothing.”

“TMI. I can't believe I even asked,” Daniel groaned and carefully moved around in a circle to slowly walk down the street.

“Midnight,” Jack called after him. “Sharp!”

  


_'I'll paint you mornings of gold, I'll spin you Valentine evenings. Though we're strangers 'til now, we're choosing the path between the stars. I'll leave my love between the stars…__' _Bowie's voice soared across the vaulted hallways of the vampire castle, like floating crystal balls, soft, seducing, alluring…

The vampire king, tall and elegant in his black velvet pants, knee high boots and white poet shirt, appeared in the fog and came forward, his pale face haughty, yet passionate as he began to circle around his victim in slow motion, showing his impressive fangs, his sparkling eyes focused solely on the point at the man's neck. Licking his glistening lips he drew the circles closer and closer around his prey.

_'...But I'll be there for you, as the world falls down. Falling, falling down, falling in love…'_

The cloak swept around the glassy eyed man in the white suit and the vampire devoured him, made him his, took him away with every suck of his teeth, with every draw of blood he took…

_'As the world falls down, falling… Falling… Falling in love…'_

They sank to the floor, the predator cradling his victim to his chest. When he finally raised his head there was blood dripping from his fangs. The man lay still, dark lashes touching alabaster skin, the ecstatic smile still frozen on pale lips, a trail of blood trickling down his neck, running into the collar of his coat.

_'As the world falls down, falling… Falling...'_

The vampire licked the trail of blood from the man's neck and then moved over him, descended his lips on the dead mouth and kissed him.

_'Falling in love…'_

Daniel, who was behind the camera, opened his mouth to yell cut and then didn't. Mesmerized, he watched them kiss, deepening the kiss, breaking away for a quick breath and then they locked lips again, smearing the fake blood all over Grey's mouth and jaw. And Grey was clearly going with the program there.

_Oh, Zack's not gonna like this one bit,_ Daniel thought with a grin. But of course he'd cut that out. He didn't need to get in the middle of all that drama involving Ron, Gray and Zack. He cleared his throat. “Cut!”

As if he had broken a ban the two of them pulled apart. Ron sat on his butt, wiping blood off his lips, muttering, “Shit.”

Grey got to his feet, kicked up his board and walked down the dark corridor over to that part of the hallway where the neon lights were on. They could see him going straight to the food table they had set up by the seating area. He grabbed a can of beer and fell into one of the seats.

“It's okay,” Daniel said into the ensuing silence, “we don't have to do that again.”

Beside him Tara let out a long breath. “Wow. That was… intense.” She moved close and whispered into Daniel's ear. “I want a copy of this before you cut it, okay?”

“As blackmail material?”

“No, you idiot, I'd never use that for blackmail. But it was, oh my god, it was beautiful.” she patted her face. “It's hot in here.”

She was right. It had been beautiful. Graceful even. Pure chemistry. And Daniel, because he had lived as one half of the one true pairing for several years, had seen the sparks, the passion in that one kiss. Of course he had seen that long before, right from the start when he had seen Ron and Grey interact with one another. But this kiss would have been his proof if he had needed any.

“They'll get there,” he murmured more to himself than to Tara, but she replied anyway.

“They have to or it'll break my heart.” Then she clapped her hands and yelled, “Hey, guys, we have several more scenes to shoot! Stop drinking, Grey! You can do that when we're done!” She rolled over on her board and took the beer from him. “Work first, party later. I have to be home at midnight.” She gave Daniel a mock-sour look. “I can't believe YOU have the same curfew as me. I'm almost sixteen!”

“In about four months,” Gray snorted.

“Well, he's thirteen!”

“We can't get it all done tonight anyway,” Daniel said as he joined them and put the camera on its stand. “But we have the most important scenes and we can just keep everything here and shoot the last couple of takes tomorrow.”

“Hey, you'll cut that out, Daniel, okay?” Daniel could see how hard Grey was blushing even under the pale make up.

“I want a copy, dude!” Ron said. He rounded the seating area, billowing cloak and all.

“No,” Grey snapped. “No one gets any copies of this.” He turned his gray eyes on Daniel. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Daniel gave the other two a shrug. “Sorry.”

Ron showed him his teeth, but it was much less authentic here in the light.

It took them almost another hour to cover the other two small scenes Daniel wanted to get done tonight. Ron and Grey had trouble focusing and then it took several takes to get the camera into the right position on its stand when it was all four of them doing the vampire party dance on their skateboards for the scene where Ron first tried to seduce Grey. They had practiced this all week, but now one of them always seemed to lose their board or make the wrong turn or get in someone's way. They were close to hysterical with both frustration and laughter by the time they finally managed to get those takes.

It was a relief to call it a wrap and dig into the food everyone had donated. Chatting and giggling they relieved their shooting, recalling how Ron's board had gone down the escalator without him when they first did the chasing after Grey scene. And how Tara had done a silly dance with one of the skeletons wrapped into her arms or how all the cobwebs had almost come down on Daniel when he had taken the wrong turn and found himself all tangled up in webbing. How Grey had let lose that horrible scream when one of the rubber spiders had fallen onto his head and how Ron hadn't been able to fit into the coffin and the tips of his boots stuck out at one end. They had finally decided to just use the coffin as a prop. In combination with the canvas backdrop Ron had created for the vampire king’s crypt the coffin still made for a great eye catcher. Ron had sprayed the canvas and crafted the illusion of vaulted walls and torches.

It was spooky. And magical.

When they started gathering their dishes and divided the left over food between them they decided to meet again the next afternoon to finish the shooting.

“I have no idea how to get all this onto my bike,” Tara groaned. “Ron, you'll be sixteen in just a couple of weeks, when are you going to get your license?”

Ron laughed. “When I have money.”

“In other words – never,” Grey grumbled, shoving Tupperware filed with cookies into his backpack.

“Probably.” Ron filled his bag with the leftover bottles and some of the packed sandwiches.

“Get a job?” Tara suggested.

“Why? So I can get a license, get a car and drive you guys around all the time?” Ron flipped her the bird. “Besides, I have a job, but I'm saving up for something bigger than a stupid license.”

“You have a job?” Grey raised his eyebrows. “Where?”

“Club Q.” Ron flashed them a smug smile.

“You are working at the Q?” Daniel flipped him the bird. He knew that club, it was one of the few gay clubs at the Springs. They had drag shows and weekend brunches. Of course he and Jack had never been there, but they had passed by it a couple of times on their way to O'Malley's. It was a pretty high-end club for adults only. He doubted they would hire kids.

“I'm just stocking up their warehouse, you know stacking crates and schlepping food. Sometimes I clean there on the weekend before they open for brunch.”

“How did you get that job?” Grey asked.

Ron shrugged. “A friend of a friend’s brother works at the bar. He got me in. I didn't even need a fake ID. Dude, chill, it's just a job. But it pays well.”

“You never told us,” Tara pouted as they trudged down the escalators.

“You never asked,” Ron said lightly.

Outside a soft blanket of snow was covering the city and it was still snowing. “Are you sure you don't want to take a cab, too?” Daniel asked, looking up into the night sky full of the dancing white.

“Nah, we'll be fine, don't worry,” Tara said. “It's not so much a problem to ride in real snow as it would be if it was sleet.”

“Our parents would be a bit put out if we took a cab for a ten minute walk from the Rainbow Center,” Grey snorted.

“Especially after it took me a lot of verbal acrobatics to convince my dad not to drop me off and pick me up again because of the weather,” Tara groused.

Only it was a much longer way home for them from Spring Mall than it would have been from the center. But Daniel didn't want to fret or sound patronizing so he watched them as they carefully rode their bikes down the road before he turned the other way and pulled out his phone to call a cab to his former home address.

Then he texted Jack to let him know he was coming home. Just in case the two of them were still playing their Egypt fantasy and needed a head’s up.

He saw a couple of witches and a group of drunk zombies while he waited for his cab, but other than that the streets were empty and quiet in this area. One of the things he had liked about living here was that it had been pretty close to downtown without being too busy.

He had a last glance at the now of dark windows of 8-3. He almost expected to feel nostalgic or at least a little bit curious about who might live there now. But he found that all he wanted was to go home and snuggle into his bed with Flyboy by his side to warm him.

  


It was twenty minutes after midnight when he paid the cab and quickly made his way up to the house, worrying a little bit about being late. When his cab had been stuck in traffic because it had suddenly started to snow again and the roads were slippery so everyone was driving at walking speed, he had been about to text Jack to tell him he was on his way, but then Tara had sent him a message, letting him know they all made it home in time and without taking nosedives with their bikes. They had texted back and forth a bit and before Daniel had been able to get his message off to Jack his driver had turned into their street.

He had just fumbled his keys out when Flyboy seemed to magically appear by his side

“Hey,” Daniel rubbed his head. “What are you doing out here?”

“Taking a leak.” Jack was coming around from the back, holding a flashlight. “You're late.”

“The cab got stuck in traffic. There's snow, everyone's driving very slowly,” Daniel muttered.

“Yeah, I noticed that. Nice save, buddy.” Jack waved at the backyard with his light. “Get in. It's damn cold.”

“Sorry I didn't text you,” Daniel felt obligated to say.

“Did you notice I didn't text you either?” Jack closed the doors to the deck behind them. “I was actually going to give you another ten before texting you.”

“I'm proud of you.” Daniel laughed and went to take his boots and jacket off.

“That's no invitation to draw out curfews. The snow bonus is a one time thing.”

“I know.” Daniel picked a discarded pharaoh head dress from the hallway floor. “Where is the King of Egypt?”

“Worn out and fast asleep.” Jack, who was dressed in his faded gray sweat pants and an old USAF shirt looked suspiciously smug. “How was the party, Skatemonkey?”

“I had fun.” And he had. A lot more fun than he had actually imagined it would be.

“Good.”

“Want to watch our vid when it's done?” He was actually dying to show it to someone. He was sure it was going to be absolutely cool.

“Yeah, I'd like that.” Jack smiled at him, then yawned. “Sleep tight.”

“Yeah. You too.” Daniel turned to go to his room, then, following a sudden need he walked back over to Jack and hugged him a bit awkwardly. It wasn't something they did a lot anymore, mostly because Daniel felt he was too old for hugs. He put his head against Jack's shoulder for a moment. “Thank you.”

He wasn't even sure what he was actually thanking him for. For not ruining Spring Mall for them. For letting him go to that party. For not giving him a hard time because he had been late. For just always being there and having his six, even on those rare occasions when Daniel had convinced himself he didn't need anyone to watch his six.

Jack's arms came around him, giving him a gentle squeeze. “Ditto.”

Daniel snorted and took a step back. “For what?”

“For letting me be your dad. For always believing I’m up for it even when I don’t quite believe it myself.”

Daniel grinned. “Not sure what’s worse sometimes. You being my dad or me being your kid.”

Jack chuckled. “My dad thinks we deserve each other. I guess he's right. Off to bed with you. I need to check on my king.”

When Daniel had brushed his teeth and snuggled under his blanket with the dog by his side, he wondered if he could convince the others to find another meeting place. Someplace where they wouldn't risk getting into trouble…. An indoor skatepark, maybe… How much would it cost to rent an old warehouse and build some ramps…? His thoughts became fractured, drifted away as he was pulled away by sleep, but tomorrow was a new day for new ideas.

_Fin_


End file.
